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Presented  to  the 

UNIVERSITY  OF  TORONTO 
LIBRARY 

by  the 

ONTARIO  LEGISLATIVE 
LIBRARY 

1980 


SOME    REMINISCENCES    OF 
WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 


O$  v 

SOME 


REMINISCENCES 

OF 

WILLIAM  MICHAEL 
NROSSETTI 


Pensando  il  breve  viver  mio  nel  quale 
Stamanc  era  un  fanciullo  ed  or  son  vecchio 

PETRARCA 


VOL   II 


NEW   YORK 
CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

'53-157   FIFTH   AVENUE 
1906 


r: 


Printed  in  Great  Britain 


rp,      j 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


XIX.     MY  LITERARY  WORK,  1858  TO  1867      .        .  297 

XX.     CHARLES  CAYLEY  AND  CHRISTINA  ROSSETTI    .  311 

XXI.     THE  CHEYNE  WALK  CIRCLE  OF  FRIENDS        .  316 

XXII.     SOME  FOREIGN  TRIPS,  ETC 343 

XXIII.  EDITING  SHELLEY,  ETC.;  TRELAWNY        .        .  358 

XXIV.  OTHER  EDITORIAL  WORK:   WHITMAN,  LIVES 

OF  POETS,  ETC 398 

XXV.     THE    INLAND    REVENUE    AND    SOME    OF    ITS 

OFFICIALS 409 

XXVI.     MY  MARRIAGE  AND  MARRIED  LIFE          .         .  420 

XXVII.     OUR  CHILDREN 446 

XXVIII.     LITERARY   AND    LECTURING  WORK,    1874   TO 

1893    ....  .468 

XXIX.     FAMILY  INTIMATES  IN  OUR  MARRIED  LIFE       .  487 

XXX.     OTHER  ACQUAINTANCES,  1874  TO  1893   .        .  495 

XXXI.     DEATHS   IN   THE   FAMILY  :    DANTE,    FRANCES, 

LUCY,  AND  CHRISTINA  ROSSETTI,  AND  OTHERS  515 

XXXII.     MY  WORK  FROM  1894  ONWARDS    .        .        -545 

XXXIII.     CONCLUDING  WORDS 564 

INDEX     ........ 


LIST   OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 

VOL.    II 

WILLIAM  MICHAEL  ROSSETTI'S  LIBRARY  .  .        Frontispiece 

(Shows  Shelley's  Sofa,  see  p.  375,  with  Helen  Rossetti  Angeli) 

TO  FACE  PAGE 

TITLE-PAGE  OF  D.   G.   ROSSETTI'S   JUVENILE  POEM   "  SIR  HUGH 

THE  HERON"  ......     302 

MS.  OF  CHRISTINA  G.  ROSSETTI  .  .  .  .312 

(Sonnet,  "  By  way  of  Remembrance,"  addressed  to  Charles  B.  Cayley) 

DR.  JOHN  WILLIAM  POLIDORI    .  .  .  .  .     385 

(From  the  Oil-picture  by  Gainsford,  c.  1820,  now  in  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery) 

LUCY  BROWN  ( ROSSETTI)  .....     420 

(Photograph  taken  in  Rome,  1873) 

MARIA  FRANCESCA  ROSSETTI.     c.  1874  .  .  .     427 

ROMEO  AND  JULIET  IN  THE  VAULT  OF  THE  CAPULETS    .  .     494 

(Water-colour  by  Lucy  Brown  (Rossetti),  c.  1871) 

FRANCES  AND  CHRISTINA  ROSSETTI          .  .  .  -533 

(By  Dante  G.  Rossetti,  1877.     Now  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery) 

WILLIAM  MICHAEL  ROSSETTI,   1905        .  .  .  .     564 


V 


Ut»< 


SUMMARY   OF   THE   SECTIONS 

XIX.  My  Literary  Work,  1858  to  1867. — My  later  work  in  The 
Spectator,  and  retirement  therefrom — Writing  in  The  Saturday  Review, 
Eraser's  Magazine,  The  Fine  Arts  Quarterly  Review,  The  Chronicle,  etc. — 
Critiques  republished  in  a  volume — Work  with  a  view  to   The  New 
English  Dictionary — Writings   connected   with    William    Blake — The 
Gilchrist  family,  Linnell,  Tatham — My  translation  of  Dante's  Inferno 

(pp.  297-310) 

XX.  Charles  Cayley  and  Christina  Rossetti. — A  love-affair  beginning 
late  in   1862,  not  resulting  in  an  engagement — Friendship  continued — 
Cayley  dies  in  December  1883 — Writings  by  Christina  bearing  hereon 

(//.  311-315) 

XXI.  The  Cheyne  Walk  Circle  of  Friends. — James  Whistler,  his  art 
and  personality — His  brother  and  mother — Frederick  Sandys — Legros 
— James  Smetham  and   Frederic   Shields — Nettleship — Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Linton — Cruikshank — H.  Treffry  Dunn — and  other  artists — Rev.  C.  L. 
Dodgson — The  Marstons — O'Shaughnessy — Joseph  Knight — Francis 
Hueffer — William  Davies — Dr.   Hake   and   his   son    George — Watts- 
Dunton — Joaquin  Miller — Mrs.  Lewes — Turguenief — and  other  writers 
— Picture-buyers,  Rae,  Graham,  Leyland,  etc. — Greeks  in  London 

(//.  316-342) 

XXII.  Some  Foreign  Trips,  etc. — Trips  in  Great  Britain — First  foreign 
visit,  Paris,   1853,  and  the  Universal  Exhibition  of   1855 — Mont  St. 
Michel  and  Caen — First   Italian  tour,    1860 — Numerous  other  Italian 
tours,  one  of  them  with  John  L.  Tupper  and  one  with  Christina — A 
robbery  in  1868  near  Venice — Persons  whom  I  saw  in  Italy,  especially 
Miss  Clare  Clairmont  in  1873 — William  Graham's  articles,  Chats  with 
Jane  Clermont — Visit  to  Germany  during  the  war  of  1870 — Other  details 

(PP-  343-357) 

XXIII.  Editing  Shelley,  etc.;  Trelawny. — Following  upon  some  notes 
on  Shelley  published  by  me  in  Notes  and  Queries,  I  am  invited  to  re-edit 

ix 


x  SUMMARY   OF  THE   SECTIONS 

his  poems  for  Moxon,  Son,  and  Co.,  and  I  undertake  this  work  in  1868 
— Varying  opinions  as  to  my  success — Sir  Percy  and  Lady  Shelley — 
Shelley's  letters  to  Miss  Kitchener  imparted  to  me  by  Mr.  H.  J.  Slack 
— Through  Barone  Kirkup  I  am  re-introduced  to  Edward  John  Trelawny 
— Description  of  his  character  and  demeanour,  and  of  his  friendly  inter- 
course with  me  continuing  up  to  his  death  in  1881 — He  presents  me 
with  a  fragment  of  Shelley's  skull,  and  with  the  sofa  which  Shelley  used 
in  Pisa — I  attend  to  the  re-edition  of  his  book  on  Shelley  and  Byron — 
Mrs.  Jefferson  Hogg — Trelawny  reading  Blake  and  Whitman — Cre- 
mation of  his  remains,  entombed  in  Rome — H.  Buxton  Forman  and  his 
edition  of  Shelley — Reprint  of  my  edition,  and  interposition  of  Miss 
Clairmont — Other  writings  of  mine  on  Shelley,  including  an  annotated 
edition  of  Adonais,  and  a  compilation,  unpublished,  named  Cor  Cordium — 
Shelley  students,  Locker  Lampson,  Denis  MacCarthy,  Mathilde  Blind 
— The  Shelley  Society  founded  in  1886  by  Dr.  Furnivall — Its  ultimate 
collapse — Drawings  by  and  relating  to  Shelley — Anecdote  as  to  his 
grave  in  Rome  (//.  358-397) 

XXIV.  Other  Editorial  Worl^ :   Whitman,  Lives  of  Poets,  etc.— Work 
for  the   Early  English   Text   Society  and  for  the   Chaucer   Society — 
Chaucer's    Troy/us  and  Cryseyde,   and  Boccaccio — An   article  of  mine 
on  Whitman  in  The  Chronicle  leads  to  my  publishing  a  selection  from 
his  poems,  1868 — Correspondence  with  Whitman,  and  Mrs.  Gilchrist's 
published  letters  regarding  him — Subscriptions    for    his  benefit — I  edit 
Moxon's  "Popular  Poets,  leading  on  to  a  volume,  Lives  of  Famous  Toets 

(pp.  398-408) 

XXV.  The  Inland  Revenue  and  some  of  its  Officials. — The  Chairmen 
of  Inland  Revenue — My  work  as  Assistant  Secretary — Remarks  as  to 
the  constitution  of  the  office — The  Secretaries — On  the  resignation  of 
Sir  Robert  Micks,  a  discussion  arises  as  to  his  successor — My  relation 
hereto,  and  appointment  of  Mr.  Heberden — My  official  and  other  income 
— The  Inland  Revenue  as  related  to  literature  (//.  409-419) 

XXVI.  My  Marriage  and  Married  Life.—Lucj  Brown,   and  my 
marriage  to  her  in  1874— Trip  to  Naples  etc. — We  return  to  Endsleigh 
Gardens,  Maria  having  entered  the  All  Saints  Sisterhood,  and  my  two 
aunts  having  taken  apartments  elsewhere— My  mother  and  Christina  leave 
in  1876— Portraits  of  my  wife— Death  of  Oliver  Brown,  1874,  an^  ^ 
Maria,  1876— Madox  Brown,  quitting  Manchester,  re-settles  in  London, 
St.  Edmund's  Terrace — Dante   Rossetti,   confining  himself  to  his  own 
house,  is  visited  by  me  weekly  from  1879— Dissolution  of  the  partner- 


SUMMARY   OF   THE    SECTIONS  xi 

ship,  Morris,  Marshall,  Faulkner,  and  Co.,  1874 — Trips  to  Belgium, 
Edinburgh,  etc. — My  wife  fails  in  her  efforts  to  continue  the  painting 
profession  ;  writes  a  Life  of  Mrs.  Shelley — Her  illness,  ultimately  fatal, 
beginning  in  1885 — She  goes  for  health  to  various  places,  including  San 
Remo,  where  we  experience  the  earthquake  of  1887 — Pau  and  Biarritz 
— General  condition  of  my  own  health — We  remove  in  1890  from 
Endsleigh  Gardens  to  St.  Edmund's  Terrace,  after  a  short  stay  with 
Christina  in  Torrington  Square — Stratford-on-Avon  and  Skipsey  the 
coal-miner  poet — My  wife's  malady  develops  into  phthisis  with  brain 
exhaustion — In  October  1893  she  finally  leaves  England  (/>/.  420-445) 

XXVII.  Our    Children.— -Five    children,    Olivia,    Gabriel    Arthur, 
Helen,  Mary,  Michael,  the  last  dying  in  infancy — Their  bringing-up — 
Foreign   nursery-governesses — Many  foreign    trips — Olivia    and    Helen, 
after  mixing  much  with  political  extremists,  write  a  book,  A  Girl  among 
the  Anarchists — What  Anarchism  consists  of — Olivia  marries  Antonio 
Agresti,  and  settles  in  Florence,  then  Rome — Arthur  employed  in  the 
Lancashire  Stoker  Works,   and  married  to  Dora  Lewis — Helen  goes 
for  health's  sake,  with  me,  to  Davos  Platz  and  Sydney — Marries  Gastone 
Angeli,  and  is  left  a  widow  with  an  infant  daughter — Mary  interested  in 
Napoleon  literature — A  robbery  from  me  in   Bale,  en  route  to  Davos 
Platz — Voyage  to  Australia,  involving  a  quarantine  for  small-pox — Mrs. 
Allport  and  her  family  at  Sydney — Olivia,  leaving  London  to  meet  us  in 
Italy,  is  suspected  of  sinister  designs,  and  dogged  by  the  police — The 
Australian  explorer,  Carr-Boyd  (pp.  446-467) 

XXVIII.  Literary  and  Lecturing  WorT^  1874  to  1893. —  My  work 
in  The  Academy  followed  by  The  Athenezum — A  libel  action  founded 
partly  on  an  article  of  mine — Work  in  The  Encyclopedia  Britannica — 
A  series  of  Democratic  Sonnets,  begun  in  1881 — Writings  on  my  brother 
after  his  death ;  his  Collected  Worlds,  Rossetti  as  Designer  and  Writer,  Portraits 
of  Rossetti,  etc. — Survivors  who  remember  Rossetti  personally  :  the  list 
should  include  (casually  omitted  in  the  text)  Arthur  Hughes,  Cathy 
Hueffer,  Mrs.  Morris,  Mrs.  Stillman — A  Life  of  Keats — Essentials  in 
biography — Paper  relating  to  Browning's  Bordello — Lectures  on  Shelley, 
The  Wives  of  Poets,  and  Leopardi  (pp.  468-486) 

XXIX.  Family  Intimates  in  our  Married  Life. — George  T.  Robinson 
and   his   family — His    daughter    Mary,    now  Madame    Duclaux — Irish 
Nationalist  members  of  Parliament — Gaston   Paris   and  others — Justin 
McCarthy  and  his  family — Sir  Thomas  Duffus  Hardy  and  his  wife  and 


xii          SUMMARY   OF  THE   SECTIONS 

daughter — Mrs.    Stillman   and   her   family — Mr.    and    Mrs.    Moncure 
Conway— Charles  Rowley — W.  M.  Hardinge,  etc.  (//.  487-494) 

XXX.  Other  Acquaintances,  1874  to  1893. —  Sir  J.  Noel  Paton— 
Walter    Crane — Harold    Rathbone — Philip    Bailey — Remarks    on    his 
Fes  tut— James     Thomson— Augusta     Webster— Hall     Caine— Francis 
Adams    and   his    poems — Mr.   and  Mrs.   Dean — William    Sharp — and 
others — Some  Japanese  acquaintances,  especially  the  poet  Yone  Noguchi 
— Charles  Aldrich,   of  Iowa — Autograph-collectors,    and   anecdote    of 
Mr.  B. — Edward  Silsbee  and  Miss  Clairmont — Mrs.  Lonsdale — Persons 
known  to  me  in  Manchester  through  Madox  Brown,  etc.  (pp.  495-514) 

XXXI.  Deaths  in  the  Family — Dante,  Frances,  Lucy,  and  Christina 
Rossetti,  and  others. — Dante  Rossetti,  his  illnesses,  and  death  at  Birch- 
ington-on-Sea,    1882 — His  will,  and  occurrences  following  his  death — 
Exhibitions  of  his  works — Buchanan's  Fleshly  School  of  Poetry,  as  analysed 
by  myself  and  by  Miss  Harriet  Jay — Tennyson  on  Rossetti — Death  of 
Frances  Rossetti,  1886 — Directly  after  Lucy  Rossetti's  departure  from 
England,  3  October   1893,  Madox  Brown  dies,  6  October — Her  stay 
in  Pallanza,  Genoa,  and  San  Remo — I  join  her  in  March    1 894,  and 
she  dies  in  April — Her  will,  and  arrangements   consequent  thereon — 
Christina's   generally  frail  health — Operation    for  cancer  in    1892,   and 
final  illness   confining   her  to  bed  from  August   1894 — The  condition 
of  her  mind  and   spirits — She  dies,   December   1894 — Her  will,   and 
provision  for  religious  bequests — Her  cat  Muff — Notes    taken    by  me 
during    her    last    illness — Mackenzie    Bell's    biography   of  her — Other 
deaths  in  the  family — Biography  of  Brown  begun  by  Lucy  Rossetti, 
and  afterwards  done  de  novo  by  Ford  Hueffer  (pp.  515-544) 

XXXII.  My  Work  from  1894  onwards. — The  last  stage  of  my  career 
in  the  Inland  Revenue,  followed  by  work  as  professional  assistant  for 
estate-duty  on  pictures  and  drawings  —  I  resign  this  position  in  December 
1903 — Visit  to  Venice,  1895,  to  act  as  one  of  the  jurors  for  prizes  in 
the  International  Art  Exhibition — Professor  Fradeletto  and  his  family — 
My  project  in    1882  of  bringing  out  Dante   Rossetti's   family  letters, 
along    with    a   biography   to    be    written    by    Watts-Dunton — In    July 
1894,  this  biography  not  being  forthcoming,  I  undertake  to  write  one 
myself,  and    the   book  is    published   in    1895 — Cross-purposes   in    The 
Athenesum  office — Putting  together  other  family  documents,  I  construct 
a  compilation,  which  gives  rise  to  three  volumes  (Rusfyn,  Rossetti,  Pr<e- 


SUMMARY   OF  THE   SECTIONS        xiii 

raphaelitum ;  Prteraphaelite  Wanes  and  Letters;  Gabrule  Rossetti),  and 
to  two  magazine  articles — Introductions  to  some  works  by  Dickens  and 
Thackeray — Dr.  John  Polidori's  Diary  unpublished — A  further  com- 
pilation named  Rossetti  Papers — A  transaction  with  the  Royal  Literary 
Fund  (pp.  545-563) 

XXXIII.  Concluding  Words. — Some  changes  in  my  time,  especially 
as  to  dogmatic  religion,  the  position  of  women,  Socialism,  and  the 
development  of  fine  art — Political  conditions,  and  Carlyle's  forecast — 
Deaths  of  friends  and  acquaintances  during  the  process  of  writing  and 
publishing  this  book  (pp.  564-566) 


SOME   REMINISCENCES   OF 
WILLIAM    MICHAEL    ROSSETTI 

XIX 
MY  LITERARY  WORK,  1858  TO   1867 

TN  1858  the  editor  and  founder  of  The  Spectator,  Mr. 
Rintoul,  was  getting  advanced  in  years,  and  was 
declining  in  health.  He  sold  the  property  to  a  new 
editor,  a  Mr.  Scott,  and  retired  from  the  concern.  I 
continued  under  Mr.  Scott  to  be  the  art-critic  of  the 
paper,  and  got  on  very  well  with  him,  though  I  had  felt 
more  drawn  to  Mr.  Rintoul.  The  only  persons  that 
I  remember  meeting  through  the  agency  of  Mr.  Scott 
were  Mr.  Andrew  McCallum,  the  landscape-painter, 
and  his  first  wife.  Mrs.  McCallum  was  a  beautiful 
woman,  having  some  fortune  in  her  own  right.  She 
was  not  of  the  stately  order  of  beauty,  but  had  a  face 
both  fine  and  charming,  and  large  eyes  of  surprising 
lustre.  She  was  one  of  the  not  quite  innumerous 
persons  who,  perusing  Dante  Rossetti's  old  prose-tale 
Hand  and  Soul  (in  The  Germ)  had  supposed  it  to  be  a 
narrative  of  actual  facts,  and  had  made  research  in  the 
Pitti  Gallery  for  the  picture,  Manus  animam  pinxit,  by 
Chiaro  dell'  Erma.  She  had  to  retire  baffled,  and  I 
conjecture  that  she  may  have  left  behind  her  the  name 

II. B 


298        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

of   "  la   bella   inglese "   who    asked    some    unintelligible 
questions. 

Mr.  Scott  retired  from  The  Spectator  at  the  close  of 
1858,  and  another  editor  succeeded.  For  a  reason 
which  I  need  not  here  detail  (not  anything  in  the  nature 
of  a  personal  dispute)  I  was  somewhat  reluctant  to  act 
under  the  new  editor,  and  I  of  my  own  accord  relin- 
quished my  position,  and  have  never  since  been  a  con- 
tributor to  The  Spectator.  I  had  done  my  work  there 
with  some  resoluteness,  and  between  November  1850 
and  December  1858  I  had  lived  to  see  the  virulent 
invectives  against  the  Praeraphaelite  painters  and  their 
movement  change  into  very  general  (though  certainly 
not  universal)  recognition,  and  in  many  quarters  ener- 
getic eulogy.  Possibly  the  eulogy  was  every  now  and 
then  not  much  more  intelligent  than  the  preceding 
abuse.  This  change  was  of  course  due  to  the  merits 
of  the  artists  themselves  ;  for  my  own  small  part,  I  will 
only  claim  to  have  "  stuck  to  my  guns."  I  did  so  with- 
out— so  far  as  I  observed — exciting  any  animosity  among 
hostile  artists  or  hostile  critics.  It  is  curious  how  long 
a  tradition  can  persist  in  matters  of  this  kind.  At 
intervals  since  I  left  The  Spectator — and  one  of  the 
instances  may  have  been  some  twenty  years  beyond  that 
date — I  have  heard  fine-art  articles  in  this  paper  at- 
tributed to  my  hand,  owing  not  to  any  conformity  in 
the  opinions  expressed,  but  simply  to  the  fact  that  I  had 
at  one  time  been  known  to  be  the  art-critic,  and  the 
persons  concerned  had  not  happened  to  learn  that  I  had 
ceased  to  be  so.  This  experience  has  always  rendered 
me  rather  chary  in  ascribing  particular  unsigned  articles 
to  particular  writers.  There  may  be  a  reasonable  pre- 
sumption, but  not  a  certainty  which  one  can  securely 


LITERARY   WORK  299 

act  upon.  I  have  known  another  rather  salient  instance 
of  the  like  kind.  In  1873  Oliver  Madox  Brown  pub- 
lished his  first  novel,  Gabriel  Denver.  It  was  reviewed 
in  The  Athenaeum  with  some  degree  of  asperity.  Oliver 
Brown  and  his  family  were  led  to  think  that  Mr.  Cordy 
Jeaffreson  was  the  reviewer ;  they  were  more  than 
sufficiently  ready  to  believe  that  such  and  such  persons 
were  "enemies,"  and  for  some  years  Mr.  Jeaffreson  passed 
with  them  as  an  enemy.  And  yet  the  assumption  was 
totally  mistaken  ;  Jeaffreson  had  nothing  whatever  to 
do  with  the  review. 

In  the  last  year  of  my  Spectator  work,  1858, 1  was  the 
art- critic  of  The  Saturday  Review  likewise.  This  con- 
nexion lasted  only  one  season,  for  the  proprietor  of  The 
Saturday,  Mr.  Beresford  Hope,  was  decidedly  adverse 
to  Praeraphaelitism,  while  I  had  been  championing  its 
cause.  The  founder  of  The  Saturday  Review,  Mr. 
Douglas  Cook,  continued  to  be  its  editor  in  1858  ;  a 
tall  man  of  middle  age,  with  a  very  red  smooth  face, 
not  of  the  literary  type. 

Between  1861  and  1864,  under  the  editorship  of 
Mr.  Froude,  I  wrote  various  articles  in  Fraser's  Maga- 
zine upon  aspects  of  fine  art,  in  immediate  relation  to 
the  annual  exhibitions  ;  and  towards  1862  I  was  the 
art-critic  of  The  London  Review,  a  paper,  edited  by 
Mr.  Patrick  Comyn,  upon  much  the  same  plan  as  The 
Saturday.  I  found  Mr.  Froude  personally  very  agree- 
able, but  my  acquaintance  with  him  was  slight.  About 
1864  Mr.  Benjamin  B.  Woodward,  the  Queen's  Libra- 
rian at  Windsor  Castle,  founded  The  Fine  Arts  Quarterly 
Review,  and  he  got  me  to  write  a  quarterly  summary  of 
fine  arts  news,  and  one  or  two  articles  of  a  more  indi- 
vidual kind.  This  review  had  some  support  in  high 


300        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

quarters  ;  but  it  did  not  seem  to  take  any  root  with  the 
public,  and  its  life  was  short.  The  same  was  the  case 
with  The  Chronicle,  a  paper  which,  beginning  in  March 
1867,  lasted  barely  a  year.  The  editor  was  Mr. 
Wetherall,  a  very  courteous  and  high-minded  gentle- 
man, a  Roman  Catholic  ;  the  paper,  a  weekly,  was  not 
exclusively  or  directly  a  religious  organ,  but  it  was 
planned  with  a  view  to  giving  expression  to  the  opinions, 
on  all  sorts  of  subjects,  of  the  more  liberal  and  advanced 
section  of  Catholics.  Lord  Acton  is  stated  to  have 
been  the  proprietor.  I,  it  was  well  understood,  was 
not  a  Catholic  ;  but  I  was  left  free  to  say  what  I  liked, 
short  of  coming  into  absolute  collision  with  Catholic 
tenets.  In  The  Chronicle  I  for  the  first  time  expressed 
my  critical  opinion  concerning  Walt  Whitman  and  his 
Leaves  of  Grass.  This  article  of  mine  had  a  sequel,  of 
which  anon. 

When  in  1867  I  published,  under  the  title,  Fine  Art, 
chiefly  Contemporary,  a  volume  reproducing  several  of  my 
papers  collected  out  of  various  periodicals,  I  drew  not 
only  upon  sources  heretofore  mentioned,  but  also  upon 
The  Edinburgh  Weekly  Review,  The  Pall  Mall  Gazette, 
The  Liverpool  Post,  and  Weldorfs  Register.  I  need  not 
however  burden  the  reader's  attention  with  any  details 
regarding  my  connexion  with  these  four  serials.  That 
phrase  in  my  title,  "chiefly  contemporary,"  indicates 
one  of  the  too  numerous  deficiencies  in  my  writings  on 
fine  art.  I  have  very  generally  been  concerned  with 
the  works  of  living  artists,  and  even  these  more  as  dis- 
played from  year  to  year  in  exhibitions  than  as  repre- 
senting the  sum  of  their  performance.  To  write  on  a 
tolerably  adequate  scale  respecting  the  great  art  of  the 
past,  or  even  respecting  the  entire  career  of  important 


LITERARY  WORK  3or 

masters  of  our  own  time,  has  been  my  lot  hardly  if 
at  all. 

There  was  another  publication  in  which  I,  and  also 
Christina,  wrote  a  good  number  of  articles  more  or  less 
short — perhaps  a  full  hundred  in  all.  It  was  entitled 
The  Imperial  Dictionary  of  Biography,  brought  out  by  sub- 
scription in  Glasgow  from  1857  to  1863,  and  edited  by 
Dr.  Waller.  My  concern  with  this  publication  may 
have  been  towards  1859-60.  My  articles  were  on 
Italian  personages  of  various  kinds — literary,  artistic, 
political,  etc.  Another  production  of  mine — about  the 
only  one  in  which  I  have  dealt  at  some  little  length 
with  a  subject  unrelated  to  literature  or  art — was  an 
article  in  The  Atlantic  Monthly ,  towards  1865,  on  Eng- 
lish Opinion  on  the  American  War  (the  war  of  Secession). 
It  affirmed  my  strong  sympathy  with  the  cause  of  the 
Northern  States,  and  analysed  the  marked  bias  which 
had  been  evinced  by  English  society  in  the  opposite 
direction.  This  article,  as  I  was  pleased  to  learn,  was 
well  received  in  America. 

In  all  this  sequence  of  years — beginning  may-be  in 
1855 — I  did  a  large  amount  of  work  for  the  Philological 
Society,  which  had  started  the  project  of  a  new  English 
Dictionary  on  a  more  extensive  and  systematic  plan  than 
anything  as  yet  extant.  This  project  ultimately  developed 
into  the  monumental  work  which  is  now  coming  out 
through  the  Clarendon  Press,  under  the  editorship 
of  Dr.  J.  A.  H.  Murray.  The  Philological  Society 
invited  various  persons  to  undertake  the  reading  of 
books  of  all  dates,  and  of  very  diverse  degrees  of  literary 
importance,  and  to  make  extracts  therefrom,  suitable  to 
be  used  as  quotations  in  the  projected  dictionary.  I 
came  into  relation  with  Mr.  Herbert  Coleridge,  who  was 


302        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

acting  as  editor  for  this  preliminary  work,  and  with 
Dr.  Furnivall,  Secretary  of  the  Society.  I  read  a  great 
number  of  books,  making — or  sometimes  only  marking 
— extracts  for  quotation  ;  I  dare  say  the  books  may 
have  exceeded  a  hundred,  and  some  of  them  big  affairs, 
such  as  all  the  dramas  of  Massinger.  I  also  did  some 
sub-editing  work,  which  probably,  in  the  long  run, 
counted  for  next  to  nothing.  My  busiest  time  with  the 
dictionary  business  may  have  lasted  up  to  1865  or 
thereabouts ;  it  has  occasionally  been  renewed  since 
then,  and  something  of  it  was  going  on  as  late  as  1900. 
It  has  befallen  me  to  do  a  good  deal  with  William 
Blake  at  one  time  or  another,  and  in  one  or  other 
form.  I  could  not  define  when  I  first  heard  about  this 
potent  inventor  in  art  and  poetry,  whose  death,  1827, 
preceded  my  birth  by  only  two  years.  My  first  in- 
formant concerning  him  must,  as  in  so  many  other 
cases,  have  been  my  brother,  at  some  such  date  as 
1846.  He  may  or  may  not  have  known  a  few  of 
Blake's  poems  and  designs  before  reading  the  graphic 
and  diverting  account  of  him  given  by  Allan  Cunning- 
him — a  writer  many  of  whose  lyrics  and  legendary 
tales  (besides  Sir  Hugh  the  Heron,  versified  by  Dante 
Gabriel  in  boyhood)  were  favourites  with  us  at  a  very 
early  age.  Anyhow,  after  reading  Cunningham's  memoir, 
our  attention  was  fixed  upon  Blake,  and  we  began  look- 
ing out  for  his  work  whenever  we  could.  In  April 
1847  a  notebook  full  of  Blake's  verse  and  prose,  pub- 
lished and  unpublished,  and  of  his  designs  mostly 
unengraved,  was  offered  to  my  brother  at  the  British 
Museum  by  an  attendant  named  Palmer  (some  rela- 
tive of  Samuel  Palmer,  the  water-colour  landscape- 
painter,  friend  of  Blake  in  his  latest  years)  ;  the  price 


A^f 


X^z** 


HUGH  THE  HERON, 

A  LEGENDARY  TALE, 


IN    FOUR    PARTS. 


BY  GABRIEL  ROSS  ETT  I,  JUNIOR. 


SIR    HUGH   THE    HERON    BOLD, 
BARON    OP   TWISELL   AND   OF   FORD, 
AND    CAPTAIN    OF   THE    HOLD. 

Scotf  s  Marmion,  Canto  1 . 


LONDON:   MDCCCXLIIL 

G.  POLIDORI'S  Private  Press, 
15;  Park  Village  East,  Regent's  Park. 

(For  Private  Circulation  only.) 

THE   FIRST   BOOK    ISSUED   BY   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI     AGED    15. 


LITERARY   WORK  303 

was  ten  shillings.  I  have  given  some  details  of  this 
matter  in  my  Memoir  of  Dante  Rossetti,  and  shall  abridge 
them  here.  Dante  Gabriel  did  not  possess  (and  in 
those  days  he  seldom  did  possess)  the  ten  shillings  ; 
but  I  luckily  did,  and  I  produced  it.  And  so  this 
exceedingly  choice  relic  became  ours.  At  my  brother's 
death  in  1882  its  commercial  value  was  very  different 
from  what  it  had  been  in  1847  :  tne  volume  sold  for 
£110.  53.,  and  even  so  it  was,  I  apprehend,  a  cheap  lot 
to  its  purchaser  Mr.  F.  S.  Ellis,  who,  after  a  rather  long 
interval,  re-sold  it  to  Mr.  W.  A.  White,  of  Brooklyn, 
United  States.  This  purchase  by  Mr.  Ellis  took  place 
at  the  sale  of  my  brother's  effects  in  July  1882,  not  very 
long  before  the  buyer  retired  from  the  bookselling  and 
(in  a  limited  degree)  the  publishing  business.  He  had 
been  my  brother's  publisher,  and  they  were  warm  personal 
friends  as  well,  and  I  take  this  opportunity  of  saying 
that  a  more  likeable^  straightforward,  and  liberal  man 
than  Mr.  Ellis  has  hardly  come  within  my  cognizance. 
He  had  besides  a  very  good  literary  turn  of  his  own,  as 
sufficiently  attested  by  his  verse-translations  of  Reynard 
the  Fox  and  The  Romaunt  of  the  Rose.  I  truly  regretted 
the  death  of  this  estimable  man  in  1901. 

Another  Blake  acquisition  of  my  brother's — at  a 
rather  later  date,  when  he  had  in  his  own  pocket  the 
small  sum  needed  as  purchase-money — was  the  rare 
pamphlet  bearing  the  following  long  title  :  A  Treatise  on 
Zodiacal  Physiognomy,  illustrated  by  Engravings  of  Heads 
and  Features,  and  accompanied  by  Tables  of  the  Time  of  rising 
of  the  Twelve  Signs  of  the  Zodiac,  and  containing  also  new 
and  Astrological  Explanations  of  some  remarkable  Portions  of 
Ancient  Mythological  History :  by  John  Varley.  Longman 
and  Co.,  1828.  This  contains  several  curious  engravings 


3o4        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

with  which  Blake  had  to  do,  especially  his  "  Ghost  of  a. 
Flea."  In  connexion  with  this  pamphlet  I  became  the 
butt  of  some  good-humoured  but  pointed  raillery  from 
my  brother,  and  also  from  Alexander  Gilchrist  ;  for  it 
was  my  ill  fortune  (the  pamphlet,  like  all  other  books 
in  those  days,  being  counted  as  the  joint  property  of 
Dante  and  myself)  to  put  it  up  with  some  other 
brochures  etc.  to  be  bound  ;  and  the  ruthless  binder, 
contrary  to  any  anticipation  of  mine,  cut  horribly  into 
the  margins,  and  interfered  with  the  engravings  them- 
selves to  some  minor  extent.  For  some  years  I  felt  a 
little  sheepish,  and  probably  looked  so,  when  Varleys 
Zodiacal  Physiognomy  was  mentioned  by  Dante  Gabriel 
or  in  his  presence. 

I  gather  that  the  active  interest  which  Alexander 
Gilchrist  took  in  Blake's  works  and  career,  and  his 
preparations  for  becoming  his  biographer,  began  towards 
1856  ;  his  work  as  a  press-reviewer  of  fine  art,  in  The 
Literary  Gazette  and  The  Critic,  towards  1858.  His  Life 
of  Etty  had  come  out  in  1855,  and  I  had  then  reviewed 
it  in  The  Spectator.  What  may  have  been  the  precise 
beginning  of  our  personal  knowledge  of  Gilchrist  I  no 
longer  remember.  It  seems  likely  that  some  one — as 
for  instance  Bell  Scott — told  him  that  my  brother 
possessed  that  MS.  book  of  Blake's,  and  that  Gilchrist 
thereupon,  in  or  about  1859,  sought  out  Dante  Rossetti> 
applying  for  leave  to  inspect  the  volume.  At  any  rate, 
my  brother  lent  him  that  book,  and  got  me  to  produce 
the  Zodiacal  Physiognomy  for  the  like  purpose.  Dante 
took  a  more  than  usual  fancy  to  Gilchrist,  thinking  very 
well  of  him  as  an  art-critic,  sympathizing  with  his 
enthusiasm  for  Blake,  and  enjoying  his  company  and 
conversation.  I  myself  may  have  met  Gilchrist  some 


LITERARY   WORK  305 

half-dozen  times  ;  spending  one  long  evening  at  his 
house  in  Cheyne  Row  (next  door  to  Carlyle),  and  being 
there  introduced  to  his  wife,  with  her  young  family  of 
four  children.  Gilchrist,  born  in  April  1828  (a  month 
before  the  birth  of  Dante  Gabriel),  was  a  young  man 
of  rather  low  middle  height,  of  strong  build  and  well- 
knit  figure,  with  a  countenance  of  much  intelligence, 
not  otherwise  specially  noticeable.  I  liked  both  him 
and  his  wife  sincerely  from  the  first.  They  had  many 
attractive  things  to  show,  whether  connected  with  Blake 
or  not,  and  obviously  lived  a  life  of  warm  affections 
and  solid  mental  interests,  not  sodden  down  into  the 
mere  commonplaces  of  society.  They  both  aspired  to  da 
a  stroke  of  good  work  in  their  sphere  and  generation 
without  timorous  uneasiness  as  to  how  other  people 
might  take  it.  A  Memoir  of  Mrs.  Gilchrist  was 
brought  out  by  her  son  Herbert  in  1887,  and  I  had  the 
opportunity  of  paying,  in  the  form  of  a  prefatory  notice, 
a  tribute  to  her  sincerely  cherished  memory.  That 
visit  of  mine  to  the  Gilchrist  household  in  Cheyne  Row 
was  the  first  and  perhaps  the  last.  It  may  have  occurred 
in  the  earlier  autumn  of  1861,  and  on  30  November  of 
the  same  year  Gilchrist,  having  caught  the  infection  of 
scarlet  fever  from  some  other  members  of  the  family 
who  recovered,  came  to  his  death.  Shortly  afterwards 
Mrs.  Gilchrist  with  her  children  removed  to  a  comfort- 
able countrified  house  —  Brookbank,  Shottermill,  Hasle- 
mere  —  on  the  border  of  three  counties,  Surrey,  Hamp- 
shire, and  Sussex.  I  was  a  visitor  there  more  than 
once. 

Gilchrist's  work  upon  The  Life  of  Blake  —  the  whole 
structure  of  the  book,  and  the  great  majority  of  its 
detailed  writing  —  was  accomplished,  and  some  chapters 


hi 


306        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

were  already  in  print ;  but  still  various  things  re- 
mained to  be  done  before  the  manuscript  could  be 
consigned  to  the  publisher  in  complete  condition.  The 
widow,  a  highly  competent  writer,  did  much  of  what 
was  required.  My  brother  offered,  on  his  own  behalf  . 
and  on  mine,  that  we  would  cooperate  in  any  way  which 
might  be  desired,  and  this  proposal  was  thankfully 
accepted.  Dante  Rossetti  undertook  the  ordering  of 
the  writings  of  Blake  which  form  the  principal  contents 
of  volume  II  ;  he  wrote  a  supplementary  chapter  to  the 
Life  (on  various  details  pertinent  to  Blake's  work  in  art 
and  poetry),  and  the  description  of  the  designs  to  The 
Book  of  Job.  I  produced,  not  without  some  pains  and 
research,  as  also  with  much  enjoyment,  the  Annotated 
Catalogue  of  E lake' 3  Pictures  and  Drawings,  and  supplied 
besides  several  remarks  having  a  critical  bearing,  which 
were  embodied  in  the  Life  here  and  there.  My  in- 
quiries for  the  purpose  of  the  catalogue  brought  me  into 
relation  with  various  persons  ;  chiefly  Captain  Butts, 
a  grandson  of  the  Mr.  Butts  who  had  been  one  of 
Blake's  chief  purchasers  and  friends. 

I  met  moreover  two  persons  who  had  actually  known 
Blake  :  John  Linnell  the  famous  landscape-painter,  and 
Frederick  Tatham,  a  sculptor.  Mr.  Linnell,  living  in 
a  large  house  at  Redhill,  Reigate,  was  about  seventy 
years  old  when  I  called  on  him  :  a  wiry,  resolute,  alert 
man,  with  a  forcible  voice.  It  was  a  Sunday  ;  and,  as  he 
was  known  to  be  a  person  of  strong  religious  views,  I 
had  rather  expected  to  find  him  disinclined  on  that  day 
for  any  secular  employment  or  talk.  However,  I  saw 
him  painting  steadily  upon  one  of  his  landscapes,  and 
he  explained  to  me  that  he  was  not  a  Sabbatarian.  He 
owned  several  works  by  Blake  ;  the  most  important  for 


LITERARY   WORK  307 

my  purposes  being  the  fine  coloured  series  from  Dante, 
done  near  the  close  of  the  artist's  life.  Several  members 
of  Linnell's  family  were  living  along  with  him.  We  sat 
down  to  table  as  many  as  eight  or  ten  ;  Linnell,  who 
liked  his  own  ways  much  better  than  those  of  other 
people,  expressed  a  preference  for  new  rather  than  old 
wine.  After  this  visit  I  had  a  little  correspondence  with 
him,  and  with  his  son  John  the  engraver,  but  had  not 
the  advantage  of  meeting  him  again  in  person.  He 
sent  me  one  or  two  small  religious  pamphlets  of  his 
writing.  Mr.  Tatham  I  saw  rather  more  frequently, 
and  I  received  several  letters  from  him.  Though  a 
sculptor  by  profession,  he  had  not,  I  surmise,  made  any 
public  impression  in  that  capacity  ;  ultimately,  joining 
the  Irvingite  Church,  he  became  a  minister,  I  con- 
jecture an  "  angel."  He  was  a  rather  fleshy  squat  man, 
with  an  expressive  face  and  animated  manner.  His  age 
may  have  been  about  fifty-five  when  I  first  met  him. 
He  was  a  ready  and  pointed  writer,  and  showed  me  a 
manuscript  or  two  on  matters  of  aesthetics,  well  deserv- 
ing of  publication.  The  chief  distinction  of  Mr.  Tatham, 
in  relation  to  Blake,  was  a  very  unfortunate  one.  He 
had  known  Blake  for  some  few  months  before  his  death, 
Mrs.  Blake  up  to  her  decease  in  1831.  She  bequeathed 
to  him  the  remaining  stock  of  the  mystic's  works — 
designs,  poems,  notebooks.  A  large  number  of  these 
were  destroyed  by  Mr.  Tatham  under  the  influence  of 
some  fanatical  religionists,  who  opined  that  the  works, 
although  in  some  sense  inspired,  were  redolent  of  quite 
the  wrong  afflatus — "##  del  neri  cherubini"  (as  Dante  says) 
had  had  his  finger,  or  his  horns  and  tail,  in  them.  A 
performance  well  calculated  to  arouse  "thoughts  that  do 
often  lie  too  deep  for  tears."  And  yet  people  who  have 


3o8        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

acquired  a  correct  idea  of  the  full  compass  of  Blake's 
utterances  and  speculations  will  not  be  exactly  surprised 
at  it. 

Gilchrist's  Life  of  Blake  was  issued  (by  Messrs.  Mac- 
millan)  in  1863,  and  was  followed  in  1868  by  Mr. 
Swinburne's  Critical  Study.  Six  years  afterwards,  1874,. 
was  published  the  Aldine  Edition  of  Blake's  Poems, 
edited  by  me  with  a  rather  long  and  analytical  Prefatory 
Memoir ;  and  for  the  re-issue  of  the  Gilchrist  book  in 
1880  I  worked  afresh  upon  the  Annotated  Catalogue. 

It  was  not  until  1865  (age  thirty-five)  that  I  beheld  a- 
writing  of  mine  produced  in  volume-form  :  an  incident 
which  cannot  be  other  than  gratifying  to  any  one  who 
undertakes  authorship.  The  volume  in  question  is  my 
blank-verse  translation  of  Dante's  Inferno.  It  was  pub- 
lished by  Messrs.  Macmillan  at  my  expense,  or  in  strict- 
ness .  at  my  mother's  ;  for  she,  knowing  that  I  had  the 
translation  by  me,  and  that  I  hesitated  to  incur  the  cost 
of  publication,  volunteered  to  produce  a  requisite  ^cx 
I  had  begun  this  translation  many  years  before,  perhaps- 
as  early  as  1852,  and  had  carried  it  on  at  intervals  for 
about  five  years  ensuing,  as  leisure  from  other  occupa- 
tions permitted.  My  primary,  I  might  say  my  sole,, 
object  was  to  give  a  direct  literal  and  unmodified  ren- 
dering of  what  Dante  said  :  with  exactness  I  combined 
literary  force  and  form  so  far  as  I  found  them  available 
and  at  my  command  ;  but,  if  a  choice  had  to  be  made 
between  the  two  requirements,  I  stuck  to  the  exactness. 
Dante,  one  does  well  to  remember,  is,  beyond  almost  all 
other  poets,  the  one  whose  own  expressions  are  so  pre- 
cise, terse,  impressive,  and  monumental,  that  to  render 
them  faithfully  goes  some  way  towards  rendering  them 
well.  In  his  Italian  they  could  not  be  better  than  they 


LITERARY   WORK  309 

are ;  and  in  our  English  they  could  easily  be  worse  than 
when  given  in  the  form  of  close  transcript.  To  para- 
phrase Dante  must  be  to  lower  him  ;  to  amplify  him  is 
to  dilute  ;  an  attempt  at  greater  ornateness  is  not  to 
decorate  but  to  desecrate.  At  the  date  when  I  completed 
my  version  of  the  Inferno  there  were  three  which  mainly 
held  the  field — Gary's,  Cayley's,  and  John  Carlyle's. 
Gary's,  in  blank  verse,  I  have  always  regarded  as  un- 
characteristic ;  it  is  competent  and  even  scholarly,  but 
not  Dantesque,  rather  Miltonic  in  a  minor  key — and 
Dante  is  widely  sundered  from  Milton.  I  cannot  but 
think  that  the  vogue  which  Gary's  translation  retains  to 
the  present  day — for  nothing  has  availed  to  displace  it — 
is  a  clear  symptom  that  English  people  do  not  yet  under- 
stand (nor  entirely  want  to  understand)  what  Dante  is 
really  like.  Cayley's  translation,  in  the  original  terza 
rima,  was  an  attempt  so  difficult  that  any  fair  measure 
of  success  in  it  was  a  feat ;  his  success  was  not  only 
fair,  but  may  even  be  called  great,  yet  necessarily  he  left 
a  good  deal  undone  in  the  direction  of  severe  fidelity, 
much  more  of  literality.  Carlyle's  version,  being  in 
prose,  might  have  been  absolutely  literal,  allowing  for 
the  intrinsic  differences  between  Italian  and  English 
modes  of  speech  ;  it  is  not  that,  and  truly  it  is  not 
more  literal  than  a  blank-verse  rendering  can  be  made. 
My  endeavour  was  to  be  fully  as  literal  as  Carlyle,  with 
the  added  similarity  and  advantage — whatever  that  may 
be  held  to  amount  to — of  verse. 

Soon  after  my  translation  had  been  published,  that  of 
Longfellow  appeared  ;  it  aims  at  much  the  same  degree 
of  literal  exactness  as  mine  did.  Of  all  men,  I  am  the 
one  whom  it  would  least  beseem  to  debate  which  of  the 
two  versions  is  the  more  successful.  I  will  only  say  that 


3io        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETT1 

in  one  respect  Longfellow  allowed  himself  a  latitude 
which  I  rigidly  avoided  to  the  best  of  my  power  ;  he 
intermixed  very  freely  lines  of  eleven  syllables  with 
those  of  ten  syllables.  Dante's  own  lines,  conforming 
to  the  structure  of  the  Italian  language,  are  of  course 
(with  the  most  casual  exceptions)  of  eleven  syllables  ; 
but  it  appears  to  me  that  in  English  poetry — I  do  not 
here  count  the  dramatic — the  typical  blank-verse  line  of 
ten  syllables  is  the  only  one  which  can  be  taken  as  the 
standard,  not  to  be  departed  from  unless  upon  urgent 
need. 

After  completing  my  rendering  of  the  Inferno  I  pro- 
ceeded to  that  of  the  Purgatorio^  and  accomplished  nine- 
teen cantos.  I  then  dropped  it,  and  paid  no  further 
practical  attention  to  those  nineteen  cantos  until  1900, 
when  I  put  them  in  the  way  of  getting  published.  No 
publisher  however  has  as  yet  come  forward,  nor  did  1 
much  expect  any.  The  Inferno  volume  was  very  fairly 
received  by  critics,  and  has  been  out  of  print  for  several 
years  past.  My  brother  designed  an  appropriate — not 
a  conspicuous — binding  for  it.  This  was  his  first  ex- 
periment in  the  line  of  binding-design,  in  which  he  was 
afterwards  a  very  successful  innovator. 

My  second  and  third  published  volumes  have  already 
been  specified  :  the  Criticism  on  Swinburne's  Poems  ana 
Ballads,  and  the  Fine  Art,  chiefly  Contemporary.  The 
latter  was  brought  out  by  Messrs.  Macmillan  at  their 
own  cost,  and  it  was  perhaps  reviewed  with  more  general 
favour  than  anything  else  I  have  produced.  The  edition 
got  nearly  sold  out,  but  without  fully  paying  its  ex- 
penses. With  this  volume  I  bring  up  to  the  year  1867 
the  account  of  my  small  literary  ventures. 


XX 

CHARLES    CAYLEY    AND 
CHRISTINA    ROSSETTI 

TN  my  seventh  section  I  have  set  forth  some  facts  con- 
cerning  my  sister  Christina's  first  affair  of  the  heart. 
There  was  a  second  such  affair,  and  indeed  one  which 
struck  root  much  deeper  than  the  first. 

I  have  previously  made  mention  of  Mr.  Charles  Bagot 
Cayley  as  being  a  pupil  of  my  father  for  Italian  attend- 
ing at  our  house  towards  1847,  tnen  an  attentive  in- 
quirer after  him  on  his  deathbed,  and  I  have  just  re- 
named him  as  a  pre-eminent  translator  of  Dante  ;  and 
in  my  twelfth  section  1  have  essayed  to  sketch  his  charac- 
ter and  demeanour  as  a  close  and  abstracted  scholar,  a 
man  of  singular  unworldliness.  Worldliness,  as  one 
may  easily  see  from  the  tone  of  Christina's  poems,  was 
not  in  the  least  to  her  taste  ;  naturally  therefore  un- 
worldliness was  no  bar  to  the  warmth  of  her  regard,  but 
rather  the  contrary.  If  my  readers  understand  my  ac- 
count of  Cayley  in  the  same  sense  in  which  I  have 
penned  it,  they  will  perceive  that  he  was  not  at  all  the 
sort  of  man  who  would  be  attractive  to  the  general  run 
of  women  ;  but  that  nevertheless  he  belonged  to  a  fine 
type  of  character,  and  the  basis  of  his  feelings  and  the 
tone  of  his  mind  were  such  as  a  woman  of  an  exceptional 
order  might  genuinely  admire,  and  could  be  led  to  love. 

3" 


3i2        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

I  forget  what  may  have  been  the  occurrence  which  brought 
Cayley  and  Christina  together,  towards  the  end  of  1862  ; 
perhaps  he  was  with  us  at  Cheyne  Walk,  for  my  brother 
and  I  had  never  lost  sight  of  him,  but  had  him  in  our 
company  every  now  and  then.  Christina  was  in  1862 
not  entirely  youthful,  thirty-one  years  of  age.  Cayley 
soon  paid  her  some  marked  attentions.  Clearly  Christina 
loved  him  before  the  year  1863  had  begun,  for  she  wrote 
at  various  dates  a  series  of  compositions  in  Italian  verse, 
which  she  kept  together  under  the  title  of  //  Rosseggiar 
deir  Oriente ;  and  the  first  of  these,  dated  December 
1862,  evinces  the  state  of  her  feelings  unmistakably. 
The  series  was  first  published  in  1896,  in  the  New 
Poems. 

As  already  said,  my  sister  was  extremely  reticent  in 
any  matter  of  this  kind,  and  many  things  may  have 
happened,  and  surely  did  happen,  of  which  I  never 
heard  any  particulars,  and  possibly  no  one  else  did. 
The  sum  of  it  seems  to  have  been  this  :  Cayley  pro- 
posed to  her  in  or  about  1864,  and  she,  being  truly 
very  much  in  love  with  him,  would  most  gladly  have 
accepted  his  offer.  But,  as  in  the  previous  case,  she 
made  the  whole  affair  a  matter  of  conscience,  to  be 
determined  by  considerations  of  religious  faith.  She 
inquired  as  to  his  creed,  and  she  found  that  he  was  not 
a  Christian  ;  either  absolutely  not  a  Christian,  or  else 
so  far  removed  from  fully  defined  religious  orthodoxy 
that  she  could  not  regard  him  as  sharing  the  essence 
of  her  own  beliefs.  She  consequently,  with  a  sore 
heart,  declined  to  be  his  wife. 

It  is  also  a  fact — and  one  to  which  I  have  already 
adverted — that  Cayley's  means  were  extremely  restricted 
and  precarious.  He  had  very  little  regular  income, 


^%^  ^rWt^W1 


MS.  OF  CHRISTINA   G.   ROSSETTI. 

SONNET,    "  BY   WAY   OF    REMEMBRANCE," 
ADDRESSED   TO    CHARLES   B.    CAYLEY. 


CHARLES   CAYLEY  AND   CHRISTINA     313 

made  hardly  anything  by  literary  work,  and  was,  spite 
of  his  genuine  talent  and  many  acquirements,  so  en- 
tirely alien  from  putting  himself  forward  in  any  practi- 
cal sphere  of  life  that  it  appeared  probable  he  would 
never  do  more  than  just  make  both  ends  meet  on  a 
very  modest  scale  of  subsistence.  This  however  was 
not  the  turning-point — it  could  not  be  said  to  count  at 
all  in  the  upshot.  While  the  question  was  still  some- 
what in  suspense,  and  when  I  had  become  aware  of  my 
sister's  feelings,  I  urged  her  in  express  terms  not  to 
hesitate  to  marry,  as  she  and  her  husband  would  be 
most  welcome  to  live  in  my  house  as  members  of  the 
family.  To  this,  I  make  no  doubt,  they  would  both 
have  assented,  had  that  been  the  only  or  the  chief  ques- 
tion at  issue.  But  it  was  not,  and  the  ultimate  decision 
rested  upon  the  religious  grounds  alone.  In  this  as  in 
other  matters  I  honour  Christina's  strength  of  principle 
and  courage  of  will ;  but  naturally  I  am  far  from  think- 
ing that  a  contrary  resolution  would  have  been  in  any 
way  unbeseeming  to  her.  She  would  have  been  far 
happier,  and  might  have  become  rather  broader  in  men- 
tal outlook,  and  no  one  would  have  been  any  the  worse 
for  it. 

Christina  did  not  view  Charles  Cayley  with  the  least 
disfavour  after  they  had  come  to  an  explanation  on 
religious  questions,  and  she  to  a  decision  governed  by 
her  creed  ;  indeed  she,  in  one  sense,  thought  all  the 
more  highly  of  him  for  having  avowed  the  truth  with- 
out disguise  or  subterfuge.  They  did  not  cease  to  see 
one  another,  but  met  every  now  and  then  either  in  my 
house  or  in  that  of  some  friend  (especially  Miss  Leif- 
child,  the  sister  of  Franklin  and  Henry  Leifchild,  whom 
I  have  slightly  mentioned  heretofore).  In  the  house, 


ii.- 


3 14        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETT1 

30  Torrington  Square,  to  which  Christina  finally  re- 
moved in  1876  with  our  mother  and  two  aunts,  and  in 
which  she  died,  Cayley  was  a  rather  frequent  visitor  ; 
and  his  appearances  there  constituted  almost  the  only 
gleam  of  sunshine  of  her  later  years,  apart  from  her 
religious  practices  and  hopes,  her  family-affections,  and 
the  sense  of  family-duties  fulfilled.  At  the  age  of  sixty, 
on  the  night  between  5  and  6  December  1883,  Cayley, 
without  any  serious  premonition,  died  of  heart-disease  : 
he  was  found  lifeless  on  the  ensuing  morning.  Christina 
was  fifty-three  years  old  on  that  same  day,  5  December. 
She  was  apprised  of  the  catastrophe,  and  came  round  to 
me  at  Somerset  House,  to  tell  me  of  it.  I  shall  not 
easily  forget  the  look  of  her  face,  and  the  strain  of 
self-command  in  her  voice  ;  she  did  not  break  down. 

Cayley's  will  appointed  Christina  to  be  his  literary 
executor — chiefly  in  respect  of  his  translations  from 
Homer  and  Petrarch  ;  the  other  works,  principally  the 
translations  from  Dante  and  the  Psalms,  were  probably 
by  that  date  out  of  print.  Every  now  and  then  she 
had  an  opportunity  (which  she  welcomed  in  the  interest 
of  his  literary  repute)  of  disposing  of  some  copies  of 
the  books.  Since  her  decease  it  would  have  devolved 
upon  me  to  do  the  like  ;  but  the  demand  for  these 
works  seems  to  have  been  wholly  exhausted,  as  I  never 
received  a  request  for  either. 

Dead  though  he  was,  Cayley  continued  to  be  a  living 
personality  in  Christina's  heart  up  to  the  day  when  she 
also  expired,  29  December  1894.  More  than  once, 
when  she  lay  on  her  bed  awaiting  the  manifest  end  in 
suffering  and  in  patience,  she  spoke  to  me  of  him,  and 
of  her  love  for  him,  in  terms  of  almost  passionate  in- 
tensity. She  preserved  with  great  care  any  minor 


CHARLES   CAYLEY   AND   CHRISTINA     315- 

writings  of  his,  manuscript  or  printed,  and  any  of  his 
small  belongings  that  had  come  into  her  hands.  It 
may  truly  be  said  that,  although  she  would  not  be  his, 
no  womari  ever  loved  a  man  more  deeply  or  more  con- 
stantly. 

Christina  Rossetti  has  passed  away ;  personally  known 
to  few,  understood  by  still  fewer,  silent  to  almost  all. 
Her  works  however  continue  to  be  cherished  by  many, 
and  I  may  perhaps  be  not  too  sanguine  in  believing  that 
they  will  so  abide  for  a  long  while  to  come.  What  I 
have  here  said  will  cast  a  not  unvalued  light  upon  several 
of  them,  more  especially  //  Rosseggiar  del?  Oriente,  and 
the  series  of  sonnets  named  Monna  Innominata.  The 
same,  as  belonging  to  an  earlier  period  of  her  life,  may 
be  said  of  From  House  to  Home.  The  short  lyric  One 
Seaside  Grave  relates  to  Charles  Cayley,  who  lies  buried 
at  Hastings  ;  it  may  have  generally  passed  (but  erro- 
neously) as  referring  to  Dante  Rossetti. 


XXI 
THE  CHEYNE  WALK  CIRCLE  OF  FRIENDS 

TN  the  house  at  Cheyne  Walk,  and  in  connexion  with 
my  brother  and  his  doings  there,  I  made  numerous 
fresh  acquaintances — so  numerous  that  I  find  it  con- 
venient here  to  divide  them  into  classes.  There  were 
artists,  authors,  picture-buyers,  and  others.  Some  few 
of  them  were  known  to  me  at  an  earlier  date,  but  may 
most  suitably  be  included  here.  I  begin  with  the  artists. 
It  was  just  about  the  time  when  he  was  preparing  to 
remove  into  Cheyne  Walk  that  Dante  Rossetti  came 
to  know  Mr.  Whistler.  I  forget  what  was  the  occasion 
of  their  first  meeting.  They  soon  became  intimate, 
Mr.  Whistler  being  eminently  endowed  with  easy  good- 
fellowship.  He  had  apartments  at  that  period  in  Queen's 
Road,  Chelsea,  which  runs  in  line  with  Cheyne  Walk  ; 
afterwards  he  removed  into  No.  2  Lindsey  Row,  which 
is  a  prolongation  of  Cheyne  Walk  itself,  near  Battersea 
Bridge.  This  painter  (whose  death  occurred  several 
months  after  I  had  penned  the  preceding  sentences),  a 
celebrated  art-leader  all  over  Europe  as  in  his  native 
America,  was  well  known  for  his  marked  personality, 
as  well  as  for  the  magic  of  his  brush.  In  1862  he 
was  fully  understood  in  England  to  be  a  very  clever 
artist,  having  exhibited  two  or  three  times  in  the  Royal 
Academy  ;  he  was  however  only  at  the  beginning  of 

316 


CHEYNE  WALK  CIRCLE  OF  FRIENDS     317 

his  career,  and,  like  so  many  other  men  of  more  than 
common  mark,  he  alienated  some  tastes  by  the  special 
quality  of  his  work  as  much  as  he  attracted  and  fasci- 
nated others.  Neither  my  brother  nor  myself  ever 
entertained  any  doubt  as  to  his  conspicuous  genius  and 
his  endowments  horf  ligne.  Some  people  fancy  (Ruskin 
evidently  did  so)  that  Whistler  was  not  only  a  peculiar 
but  a  careless  and  haphazard  executant.  I  can  testify 
the  contrary ;  for  I  had  ample  opportunities  of  observing 
in  those  days  that  he  took  a  great  deal  of  pains,  was  far 
from  easily  satisfied  with  his  work,  and  tried  repeated 
experiments  and  alterations  until  he  got  it  to  conform 
adequately  to  his  intentions.  There  was  always  an  idea 
present  to  his  mind,  a  standard  of  something  to  be  ex- 
pressed, and  of  how  to  express  it  ;  and  towards  this  he 
endeavoured  indefatigably,  however  much  people  might 
imagine  that  he  knocked  the  thing  off  as  a  whimsy. 
In  fact  I  have  met  few  men  whose  temperament  and 
interests  were  so  essentially  those  of  an  artist — and  an 
artist  convinced  in  thinking  and  heedful  in  planning. 
If  he  had  not  been  a  wit  and  a  "  character,"  as  well  as 
an  artist,  the  public  would  perhaps  have  been  more 
readily  persuaded  of  this. 

I  find  it  recorded  that  Mr.  Whistler  was  born  in 
Massachusetts ;  but  it  appears  to  me  that  his  con- 
nexions and  sympathies  were  much  more  with  the 
Southern  States  of  the  Union  than  with  the  Northern. 
He  was  far  removed  from  being  either  an  Abolitionist 
or  a  Negrophile.  Mr.  Whistler  had  in  him  (of  course) 
a  good  deal  of  the  American,  much  of  the  Frenchman — 
his  art-training  was  mostly  in  Paris — and  very  little  of 
the  Englishman.  He  had  a  touchy  sense  of  honour, 
and  a  great  inclination  to  vindicate  it  by  a  practical 


3i8        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

process  if  it  were  in  any  way  assailed.  There  was  an 
untoward  affair  which  in  1867  brought  him  into  collision 
with  a  member  and  the  Committee  of  the  Burlington 
Fine-Arts  Club,  to  which  my  brother  and  I,  as  well  as 
himself,  belonged.  1  shall  not  enter  into  any  details, 
but  simply  say  that,  as  we  considered  him  to  be  un- 
fairly treated,  though  not  originally  in  the  right,  I 
resigned,  and  Dante  Gabriel  followed  my  example. 
For  companionable  pleasantry  I  have  known  no  man 
superior  to  Whistler  ;  and  with  people  whom  he  liked 
he  could  be  in  every  sense  most  agreeable.  He  seems 
to  have  liked  me,  for  neither  of  us  ever  had  the  least 
tiff  with  the  other,  although  on  one  occasion  I  expressed 
to  himself,  in  company  at  our  dinner-table,  a  very  de- 
cided opinion  adverse  to  a  performance  of  his  (he  him- 
self related  the  anecdote)  on  a  recent  homeward  voyage 
from  Valparaiso.  This  performance,  a  very  summary 
vote  de  fait)  had  to  do  with  a  gentleman  whom  he  chose 
to  designate  "  The  Marquis  of  Marmalade,"  a  negro  or 
mulatto,  who  had  been  on  board.  I  was  rather  surprised 
that  Mr.  Whistler  took  my  protest  in  good  part,  with- 
out retort  at  the  moment,  or  after-abatement  of  cordiality. 
And  this  leads  me  to  state  it  as  my  general  experience 
in  life  that  a  man  who  has  firm  opinions  of  his  own,  and 
who  expresses  them  uncompromisingly  but  free  from  any 
admixture  of  gibing  or  ill-will,  can  do  so  to  an  opponent 
equally  steadfast,  and  yet  not  be  viewed  with  any  serious 
aversion.  Burne-Jones,  with  other  friends,  was  present 
at  that  dinner.  He  did  not  give  vent  to  words  of  in- 
dignation, but  the  look  of  his  countenance  spoke  volumes 
on  the  subject.  He  was  one  of  the  witnesses  subpoenaed 
years  afterwards  on  Ruskin's  side  in  the  action  Whistler 
versus  Ruskin,  and  of  course  the  main  drift  of  his 


CHEYNE  WALK  CIRCLE  OF  FRIENDS     319 

evidence  was  favourable  to  the  defence.  I  thought  how- 
ever that  he  followed  a  very  fair  line.  On  being  asked 
some  question  about  Whistler's  pictures,  he  replied  in 
a  tone  of  much  earnestness :  "  His  works  have  very  fine 
tone  ;  in  tone  he  is  unapproachable." 

No  artist  of  my  acquaintance  rivalled  Mr.  Whistler  in 
the  copiousness  or  piquancy  of  his  bons  mots.  Here  is 
one.  After  the  Ruskin  trial,  resulting  in  his  recovering 
the  damages  of  one  farthing  without  costs  (a  verdict 
which  appeared  to  me  anything  but  equitable),  Mr. 
Whistler  found  himself  involved  in  some  heavy  liabili- 
ties, which  he  had  to  meet  as  best  he  could — and  bad 
was  the  best.  He  was  then  living  in  an  artistically  got- 
up  house  in  Tite  Street,  Chelsea,  termed  "  The  White 
House."  He  asked  to  a  dejeuner  at  his  residence  a 
number  of  people,  including  my  wife  and  myself. 
Various  liveried  attendants  were  visible  at  the  table  : 
they  were  in  more  than  sufficient  proportion  to  the  not 
innumerous  guests,  and  they  handed  round  with  great 
assiduity  choice  dishes  and  palatable  wines.  As  we  were 
rising  from  the  repast,  a  lady  observed  to  our  genial 
host :  "  Your  servants  seem  to  be  extremely  attentive, 
Mr.  Whistler,  and  anxious  to  please  you."  "  Oh  yes," 
replied  he,  "  I  assure  you  they  wouldn't  leave  me"  They 
were  "  men  in  possession,"  the  myrmidons  of  a  vigilant 
landlord.  I  will  add  another  sprightly  trait,  coming  in 
the  same  connexion.  The  Ruskin  trial  left  the  plaintiff 
liable  for  his  own  costs,  though  not  for  those  of  the 
defendant.  Some  fervent  Ruskinites,  always  a  plentiful 
company,  got  up  a  subscription  to  pay  the  costs  of  "  the 
Master."  Whistler  then  wrote  to  his  solicitor,  Mr. 
James  Anderson  Rose,  saying  (and  I  could  not  but  agree 
with  him  so  far)  that  it  would  be  at  least  equally  appro- 


32o        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

priate  for  a  band  of  subscribers  to  pay  his  costs  ;  and  he 
added,  with  one  of  his  not  easily  imitable  touches,  "And, 
in  the  event  of  a  subscription,  I  would  willingly  con- 
tribute my  own  mite."  But  the  subscribers  were  not 
forthcoming. 

Through  Mr.  Whistler  I  knew  his  younger  brother, 
a  surgeon,  who  had  (if  I  remember  right)  been  an 
army-surgeon  on  the  side  of  the  Confederates  in  the 
American  war  of  Secession  ;  and  I  met  once  or  twice 
their  mother,  a  sweet  elegant  lady,  past  middle  age,  of 
whom  the  artist  painted  the  admirable  and  touching 
portrait  now  in  the  Luxembourg  Gallery.  I  was  glad 
to  see,  in  the  summer  of  1903,  soon  after  Whistler's 
death,  that  the  authorities  of  the  Gallery  had  temporarily 
removed  this  picture  from  its  wall,  and  had  placed  it  in 
a  post  of  honour  on  an  easel  draped  in  black.  The 
brother  was  a  slow-spoken,  rather  taciturn  man,  of 
superior  skill  (I  understand)  in  his  profession.  Like  the 
painter,  he  had  a  considerable  contempt  for  "  niggers  "  ; 
and  yet  I  recollect  an  instance  in  which  he  admitted 
about  as  much  in  their  favour  as  the  most  zealous  aboli- 
tionist could  ask  for.  I  had  always  been  an  admirer  of 
Mrs.  Beecher  Stowe's  romance,  Uncle  Toms  Cabin  ;  but 
still  I  was  inclined  to  take  cum  grano  sails  the  exalted 
Christian  virtues  of  Uncle  Tom.  I  asked  Mr.  William 
Whistler  :  "  Do  you,  from  your  knowledge  of  the  negro 
race,  consider  that  Uncle  Tom  is  a  mere  fancy  portrait, 
or  that  one  would  really  find  a  black  slave  of  that  exalted 
type  of  conscientious  sentiment  ? " — u  Yes  indeed,"  he 
replied,  "  I  think  a  nigger  of  that  kind  is  by  no  means 
very  rare,  among  such  as  '  take  to  religion.' " 

Mr.  Frederick  A.  Sandys  was  an  artist  much  better 
known  towards  the  date  of  1862  to  1872  than  to  men 


CHEYNE  WALK  CIRCLE  OF  FRIENDS     321 

of  the  present  generation.  He  was  a  fine  draughts- 
man, a  finished  though  rather  hard  painter,  well  accom- 
plished in  the  composition  of  subjects  whether  classic  or 
romantic,  and  of  marked  ability  in  portraiture.  He  pro- 
duced many  striking  designs  for  wood-blocks.  I  first 
heard  of  this  gentleman  in  1857,  when  he  published  a 
caricature  of  Millais's  picture,  Sir  Isumbras  at  the  Ford. 
The  drawing  made  free  with  the  physiognomies  of 
Millais,  Holman  Hunt,  and  Dante  Rossetti  ;  but  the 
only  person  treated  in  it  with  some  asperity  was  Ruskin, 
who  figured  as  a  donkey  of  abnormal  dimensions.  Not 
long  afterwards  I  was  introduced  to  Mr.  Sandys  at  one 
of  those  free-and-easy  soirees,  at  which  I  have  glanced, 
at  the  chambers  of  Mr.  Vaux.  I  was  not  rightly  ac- 
quainted with  him  however  until  my  brother  and  I  had 
settled  in  the  Cheyne  Walk  house  ;  there  he  was  a  fre- 
quent visitor,  and  at  one  period  he  stayed  continuously 
in  the  house  for  many  months  together.  Mr.  Sandys 
had  seen  a  good  deal  of  life,  and  was  familiar  with  the 
ups  and  downs  of  it  :  as  an  artist  he  set  himself  a  high 
standard,  and  never  lapsed  into  doing  less  than  his  best. 
He  was  not  among  the  men  whom  I  most  liked  or 
esteemed  ;  but  in  personal  intercourse  he  was  facile  and 
amicable,  and  I  have  passed  many  an  agreeable  hour  with 
him.  In  1869  an  unfortunate  split  occurred  between 
Sandys  and  Dante  Rossetti.  The  latter  considered  that 
the  former  imbued  his  mind  overmuch  with  pictorial 
motives  and  treatment  of  which  Rossetti  was  the  origina- 
tor, and  that  he  reproduced  them  in  works  not  indeed 
outwardly  very  conformable  to  Rossetti's  methods,  but 
still  so  far  germane  to  them  as  to  forestall  his  own  hold 
upon  his  projects  of  work.  In  a  very  unaggressive 
spirit  he  represented  this  state  of  the  facts  in  a  letter 


IN." 


322        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

which  he  addressed  to  Mr.  Sandys  ;  but  Sandys  was  not 
at  all  inclined  to  accept  such  a  view,  and,  as  the  upshot 
of  a  few  letters  interchanged,  he  renounced  all  further 
friendship  with  my  brother.  My  own  firm  belief  is  that 
the  latter  was  correct  in  his  estimate  of  the  facts,  and 
was  free  from  any  blame  in  the  tone  in  which  he  set  them 
forth.  Towards  1875  R°ssetti  took  the  first  step,  by 
writing  a  friendly  letter,  for  effecting  a  reconciliation, 
and  Sandys  responded  warmly.  Later  on  he  asked  my 
brother  to  come  and  see  some  of  his  current  work. 
This,  so  far  as  sentiment  went,  Rossetti  was  quite 
inclined  to  do  ;  but  by  that  time  he  had  wholly  ceased 
to  call  upon  any  one  for  any  purpose,  and  he  did  not  go. 
I  myself  may  have  seen  Mr.  Sandys  two  or  three  times 
between  the  dates  of  the  misunderstanding  and  the 
reconciliation. 

The  distinguished  French  painter,  Alphonse  Legros, 
who  had  already,  in  his  own  country,  given  evidence  of 
iine  powers,  came  to  London  towards  1864,  and  through 
Whistler  became  known  to  my  brother  and  myself.  I 
was  already  a  hearty  admirer  of  this  artist ;  for  in  1861 
I  had  seen  in  the  Paris  Salon  his  large  picture  entitled 
Ex  Voto  (now  in  the  Museum  of  his  native  Dijon),  and 
had  printed  my  opinion  of  it  as  "  most  masterly  in  char- 
acter, and  profound  in  feeling."  We  saw  a  good  deal  of 
Legros  for  three  or  four  years  ensuing.  My  brother, 
with  his  usual  generosity  of  impulse,  did  his  best  to 
promote  the  sale  of  the  French  artist's  works  among 
purchasers  over  whom  he  had  some  influence  ;  and 
Legros  was  so  good  as  to  paint  an  oil-portrait  of  me 
which  has  remained  in  my  possession,  and  has  figured  in 
the  Wolverhampton  Art  Exhibition  of  1902.  After  a 
while  an  unfortunate  circumstance  (connected  with 


CHEYNE  WALK  CIRCLE  OF  FRIENDS     323 

Whistler  and  quite  unconnected  with  my  brother  or 
myself,  or  with  the  feeling  entertained  towards  us  by 
Legros)  interfered  with  his  continuing  to  call  in  the 
Cheyne  Walk  house  ;  and  since  then  I  have  seldom 
encountered  him  again,  though  retaining  my  high  esti- 
mate of  his  art,  and  my  entire  good-will  towards  him- 
self. 

Sir  Laurence  Alma-Tadema  was  another  foreign  artist 
(for  many  years  now  anglicized)  who  came  among  us 
pretty  often  :  it  was,  I  think,  at  the  house  of  Madox 
Brown  that  he  first  met  his  present  wife,  then  Miss 
Laura  Epps.  We  admired  his  powers  and  performances 
in  the  art,  and  prized  his  bluff  and  downright  but  in  no 
way  unconciliatory  turn  of  character.  Few  professional 
careers  have  been  attended  with  more  constant  success 
than  his.  There  was  also  Mr.  (afterwards  Sir)  Frederick 
W.  Burton,  the  water-colour  painter  and  Director  of  the 
National  Gallery,  a  well-accomplished  artist  and  a  man 
of  much  dignified  refinement  of  person  and  converse. 

Two  painters  who  were  close  friends,  and  who  were 
sharply  distinguished  from  most  of  our  artistic  ac- 
quaintances of  the  Cheyne  Walk  days  by  the  fact  that 
they  were  earnest  believing  and  practising  Christians,  of 
the  Nonconformist  class,  were  James  Smetham  and 
Frederic  James  Shields.  The  former  died  many  years 
ago  :  the  latter  is  still  living,  and  in  the  active  exercise 
of  his  art.  The  date  when  my  brother  first  knew  Mr. 
Smetham  appears  to  have  been  1855  :  they  may  have 
met  in  the  art  class  of  the  Working  Men's  College. 
Mr.  Smetham,  a  strongly-built  man,  with  a  fine  face 
marked  by  observant  and  reflective  gravity,  was  a  toler- 
ably frequent  visitor  in  Cheyne  Walk  :  Dante  Rossetti 
both  respected  and  liked  him,  and  promoted,  so  far  as  he 


324        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

could,  the  sale  of  his  pictures.  These  were  mostly  of  a 
religious  or  idyllic  order  :  not  strong  in  execution,  but 
with  genuine  qualities  of  thought  and  invention,  and  of 
imaginative  feeling.  Since  his  death  he  has  been  remem- 
bered less  by  his  pictures  than  by  a  selection  of  his 
correspondence  which  was  brought  out  in  1892  by  a 
steady  friend,  Mr.  William  Davies,  and  which  secured> 
as  it  deserved  to  do,  a  full  measure  of  attention. 
Smetham,  a  married  man  with  a  family,  was  never  in 
easy  circumstances,  but  plodded  on  from  year  to  year, 
industrious,  unambitious,  and  contented.  The  closing 
period  of  his  life  was  of  the  most  melancholy  kind. 
Pondering  his  narrow  fortunes,  Bible  in  hand,  and 
brooding  over  the  frequent  Old  Testament  promises 
that  Jehovah  would  amply  provide  for  the  worldly  well- 
being  of  the  devout,  he  came  to  the  conclusion  that  he 
must  too  truly  be  a  reprobate,  exposed  to  the  divine  dis- 
pleasure in  this  world  and  in  the  next.  He  totally 
broke  down  under  this  strain  upon  his  mind  and  feel- 
ings, and  for  several  years  preceding  his  death  he 
remained  in  a  state  of  severe  seclusion.  This  is  the 
most  distinct  and  painful  case  of  religious  mania  that 
has  come  under  my  personal  observation. 

Mr.  Shields  must  have  become  known  to  my  brother 
at  a  later  date  than  Mr.  Smetham  :  perhaps  after  the 
publication  in  1865  of  the  series  of  very  excellent 
designs  by  this  artist  to  Defoe's  Plague  of  London,  and 
to  The  Pilgrim  s  Progress.  They  soon  became  intimate, 
with  sincere  affection  on  both  sides.  I  could  indeed 
hardly  name  any  one  who  loved  Dante  Rossetti  more 
warmly  than  Shields  did  ;  and  in  the  closing  years  of 
my  brother's  life,  when  he  depended  greatly  upon  the 
visits  of  friends  for  a  modicum  of  cheerfulness,  Shields 


CHEYNE  WALK  CIRCLE  OF  FRIENDS     325 

was  most  steady  and  unwearied  in  attendance.  As 
he  is  one  of  the  most  nervously  sensitive  of  men, 
suffering  not  only  mentally  but  physically  from  scenes 
and  incidents  of  distress,  this  persistency  of  his  was 
often  an  act  of  positive  and  acute  self-sacrifice.  He 
was  present  in  the  house  at  Birchington-on-Sea,  I  believe 
in  the  bedroom,  at  the  very  moment  of  my  brother's 
death.  He  was  a  close  friend  also  of  Madox  Brown, 
with  whom  it  was  at  first  proposed  to  couple  him  in  the 
mural  painting  of  the  Manchester  Town  Hall ;  and  he 
took  a  very  leading  part  in  the  association  of  subscribers 
whereby  Brown  was  commissioned  to  paint  a  picture 
bespoken  for  the  National  Gallery.  Brown  did  not  live 
to  complete  the  work  thus  undertaken  ;  but  the  com- 
mittee made  choice  of  one  of  his  best  paintings  of  old 
date,  Christ  washing  Peter's  feety  which  was  hung  for  a 
while  in  the  National  (and  now  in  the  National  British) 
Gallery.  The  display  of  this  picture  did  at  once  not  a 
little  towards  giving  Madox  Brown,  too  long  neglected 
by  his  contemporaries,  something  like  his  proper  posi- 
tion among  the  British  painters  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. I  need  not  dwell  upon  the  fine  work  which  Mr. 
Shields  has  himself  produced,  distinguished  more  especi- 
ally for  the  invention  and  treatment  of  biblical  and 
sacred  subjects  in  series,  at  the  Chapel  of  Eaton  Hall, 
Cheshire  (the  Duke  of  Westminster's),  and  at  the 
Chapel  of  the  Ascension  in  Oxford  Street,  erected  by 
Mrs.  Russell  Gurney. 

Mr.  Charles  Fairfax  Murray,  the  painter  and  art- 
expert,  now  owner  of  a  very  large  and  fine  collection  of 
works  amid  which  those  of  Dante  Rossetti  figure  con- 
spicuously, became  known  to  us  as  hardly  more  than  a 
lad  towards  1867,  after  he  had  first  brought  himself 


326        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

under  the  notice  of  Ruskin.  Mr.  Murray  was  always 
ready  to  do  any  friendly  and  good-natured  service  to  my 
brother — such  as  copying  his  poems  from  the  original 
manuscript,  or  sending  him  photographs  (I  possess  many 
of  them  to  the  present  day)  from  Italian  works  of  art 
interesting  or  useful  to  him.  He  is  one  of  the  compara- 
tively few  acquaintances  of  old  time  whom  I  still  see 
every  now  and  then,  and  always  much  to  my  satisfaction. 
He  now  resides — when  in  London,  but  he  is  frequently 
away  on  the  Continent — in  the  house  in  West  Kensington 
which  used  to  be  tenanted  by  Burne-Jones. 

Mr.  John  T.  Nettleship,  at  the  beginning  of  his 
studentship  as  a  painter,  made  my  brother's  acquaintance, 
and  mine  as  well  ;  introduced  perhaps  by  Mr.  John 
Payne  or  Mr.  Arthur  O'Shaughnessy.  As  he  had  not 
from  the  first  been  destined  for  the  pictorial  profession, 
he  was  older  than  most  beginners,  twenty-seven.  He 
was  an  intellectual  young  man,  full  of  abstract  conceptions 
in  subject-matter  for  design,  more  in  the  vestiges  of 
William  Blake  than  of  ordinary  artists  :  such  a  subject  as 
"  God  creating  Evil "  had  no  terrors  for  him — or  I 
should  rather  say,  not  any  such  terrors  as  dissuaded  him 
from  designing  it.  My  brother  was,  I  infer,  Nettleship's 
first  purchaser  :  he  bought  an  impressive  drawing  of  a 
lion.  I  need  scarcely  remark  that  lions,  tigers,  gnus, 
serpents,  and  other  wild  beasts,  formed  Mr.  Nettleship's 
chief  personnel  in  his  maturer  practice  :  he  studied  them 
hard,  conceived  them  finely,  and  realized  them  forcibly. 
Now  that  he  is  gone  (1902),  his  vigorous  treatment  of 
such  themes  will  not  be  easily  matched. 

Mr.  William  James  Linton,  the  wood-engraver,  was 
an  occasional  visitor  in  Cheyne  Walk  :  I  knew  also  his 
wife,  Mrs.  Lynn-Lin  ton.  They  were  friends  more  es- 


CHEYNE  WALK  CIRCLE  OF  FRIENDS     327 

pecially  of  William  Bell  Scott,  and  it  may  be  that  he  was 
the  first  to  bring  us  together.  Scott  had  in  his  Newcastle 
days  known  Linton,  who  at  that  time  resided  in  the 
house  at  Coniston  where  Ruskin  (who  reconstructed  it 
to  a  large  extent)  passed  the  latter  period  of  his  life. 
Mr.  Linton,  as  is  well  known,  was  a  writer  in  prose  and 
verse  and  an  active  ultra-liberal  politician,  as  well  as  a 
wood-engraver  :  my  brother  appreciated  his  professional 
skill  without  concerning  himself  in  his  politics,  which 
were  more  in  my  line  than  in  Dante  Gabriel's.  After  a 
while  Linton  emigrated  to  the  United  States,  his  wife 
continuing  to  reside  in  London.  She  was  a  rather  large 
woman,  very  near-sighted,  with  prominent  eyes,  a  sweet 
mild  voice,  and  extremely  quiet  self-possessed  address. 
I  never  relished  her  phrase  of  "the  shrieking  sister- 
hood," and  her  printed  attacks  upon  the  women  whom 
she  thus  designated.  Certainly  however,  if  shrieks 
really  emanated  from  that  sisterhood,  she  had  a  right  to 
say  that  her  own  personal  style  was  entirely  different. 

Towards  1866  a  movement  was  started  for  getting  up 
a  subscription  to  benefit  the  veteran  George  Cruikshank : 
Charles  Augustus  Howell  (about  whom  I  gave  some 
details  in  my  Memoir  of  Dante  Rossetti)  was  foremost  in 
this  affair.  My  brother  and  I  subscribed,  and  I  drew  up 
some  of  the  circulars  which  were  sent  about.  Cruik- 
shank on  one  occasion  dined  with  us  in  Cheyne  Walk. 
He  would  then  have  been  something  like  seventy-four 
years  old,  but  was  still  brisk  and  hearty,  without  any 
sign  of  the  infirmities  of  age.  I  recollect  having  left  the 
house  with  him  at  nightfall,  to  see  him  into  an  omnibus 
or  what  not ;  and  soon  after  starting  he  set  off  running 
in  the  street,  through  mere  exuberance  of  vitality.  His 
talk  in  our  company  was  of  an  old-fashioned  turn,  partly 


328        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

about  Sunday-schools,  and  he  seemed  to  have  very  little 
acquaintance  with  the  well-reputed  artists  and  the  current 
art-topics  of  that  date.  The  subscription  proved  a  fair 
success,  yet  not  in  a  striking  degree. 

Dante  Rossetti  has  generally  been  credited  with  the 
employment  of  two  professional  assistants  :  Mr.  W.  J. 
Knewstub,  who  came  to  him  towards  the  beginning  of 
1863,  and  Mr.  Henry  Treffry  Dunn,  who  was  installed 
in  the  course  of  1867.  Mr.  Dunn,  but  not  Mr.  Knew- 
stub, was  in  the  full  sense  a  professional  assistant.  He 
was  a  Cornishman,  with  a  narrow,  full-tinted  visage,  pre- 
maturely grey  hair,  and  lively  dark  eyes.  He  was  an 
efficient  painter,  with  qualities  of  execution  more  solid 
than  graceful,  and  was  of  much  use  to  Rossetti  in  a 
variety  of  ways.  The  engagement  of  Mr.  Dunn  as  a 
regular  professional  assistant  terminated  in  1881,  but  he 
did  some  occasional  work  for  my  brother  during  the 
brief  remainder  of  the  latter's  life.  His  own  end  came 
in  1899.  He  left  some  memoranda  about  Dante  Rossetti 
and  his  ways,  now  published  (December  1903),  and 
forming  an  entertaining  little  book. 

From  artists  whom  I  knew  in  the  Cheyne  Walk 
house  I  next  proceed  to  authors. 

One  of  the  earliest  of  these — but  I  only  saw  him  once 
or  twice — was  the  Rev.  C.  L.  Dodgson,  whom  the 
English-speaking  world  knows  under  the  name  of  Lewis 
Carroll.  He  was  a  skilful  amateur  photographer,  and 
he  took  some  few  photographs  of  Dante  Rossetti,  and  of 
other  members  of  the  family.  He  continued  keeping 
up  some  little  acquaintance  with  Christina  till  the  close 
of  her  life,  sending  her  his  successive  publications. 
My  reminiscence  of  Mr.  Dodgson  is  so  slight  and  inde- 
terminate that  it  would  be  vain  to  attempt  any  exact- 


CHEYNE  WALK  CIRCLE  OF  FRIENDS     329 

ness  of  description.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  he  impressed 
me  mainly  as  belonging  to  the  type  of  "  the  University 
Man  "  :  a  certain  externalism  of  polite  propriety,  verg- 
ing towards  the  conventional.  I  do  not  think  he  said  in 
my  presence  anything  "  funny  "  or  quaint. 

Of  Dr.  James  Westland  Marston  the  dramatist,  and 
his  son  Philip  Bourke  "  the  blind  poet,"  I  have  made 
some  mention  in  my  eighth  section.  My  acquaintance 
with  this  family,  originating  in  the  publication  of  The 
Germ,  may  have  lapsed  towards  1853  :  but  at  some  such 
date  as  1868  my  brother  came  frequently  into  contact 
with  them,  probably  through  the  medium  of  Madox 
Brown,  and  then  1  also  saw  something  of  them  again — 
and  more  especially  after  my  marriage  (1874),  when 
Philip  Marston  became  a  frequent  visitor  in  our  house. 
He  had  endeared  himself  to  my  wife,  and  to  other 
members  of  the  Brown  family,  by  his  very  warm  in- 
timacy with  Oliver  Madox  Brown,  who  died,  aged  not 
quite  twenty,  in  November  1874.  The  career  of  Philip 
Marston  was  one  of  the  most  tragic  in  the  annals  of 
literature.  He  was  blind  from  his  fourth  year — 
although  he  could  just  discern  a  glimmer  of  light,  so 
as  to  know  when  his  face  was  turned  towards  a  window 
or  away  from  it.  About  the  age  of  twenty  he  had  the 
strange  good  fortune  of  finding  a  young  lady,  beautiful 
and  accomplished,  who  was  willing  to  be  his  bride  :  but 
this  good  fortune  turned  into  calamity,  for  she  died  two 
or  three  years  afterwards.  Then  his  chief  dependence 
for  comfort,  companionship,  and  mental  stimulus,  seemed 
to  be  upon  Oliver  Brown,  who  expired  as  above  stated  : 
and  his  sister  Cecily  Marston,  who  was  most  unwearied 
in  affectionate  care  for  him,  died  very  suddenly  in  1878. 
There  remained  two  poets  for  whom  he  entertained  the 

II. D 

***** 


330        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

keenest  admiration,  combined  with  personal  attachment 
— Dante  Rossetti  (whose  funeral  he  attended  at  Birch- 
ington-on-Sea),  and  James  Thomson,  the  author  of  The 
City  of  Dreadful  Night.  They  both  died  in  1882 — 
Thomson  being  struck  down  by  his  mortal  illness  in  the 
very  room  which  Marston  occupied.  Another  close 
literary  intimacy  which  had  cheered  him  much,  that  with 
the  American  authoress  Mrs.  Chandler-Moulton,  had 
been  set  aside  by  her  returning  from  London  to  America. 
It  is  no  wonder  that  Philip  Marston  was  a  confirmed  pes- 
simist. He  and  his  father  lived  together  towards  the 
last  in  lodgings — the  father  much  harassed  by  nervous 
maladies,  and  neither  of  them  having  more  than  very 
restricted  means  of  livelihood.  So  much  wretchedness 
could  not  fail  to  leave  some  trace  upon  the  character  and 
habits  of  the  blind  poet  ;  and,  when  the  end  came,  in 
February  1887,  n^s  ^est  friends  were  compelled  to  say 
that  it  had  not  come  too  soon.  Dr.  Westland  Marston 
survived  till  1890,  having  seen  the  grave  close  over  all 
his  three  children:  the  third  had  been  married  to  the 
poet  Arthur  O'Shaughnessy.  As  to  the  poetic  de- 
servings  of  Philip  Marston,  it  must  be  apparent  that  a 
man  blind  from  infancy  was  precluded  from  being  a  poet 
of  the  first  rank :  he  did  much  more,  and  much  better, 
than  could  have  been  expected  from  a  faculty  so  terribly 
barred  by  the  fiat  of  nature. 

O'Shaughnessy,  whom  I  have  just  mentioned,  was 
pretty  well  known  to  me.  He  was  a  well-looking  young 
man,  with  a  certain  airy  elegance  of  manner.  Hibernian 
though  his  name  was,  his  speech  was  that  of  any  other 
Londoner — he  was  in  fact  born  in  London.  He  died 
early  in  1 88 1,  a  year  or  two  after  the  decease  of  his  wife. 
A  grotesque  anecdote  used  to  be  current  of  O'Shaugh- 


CHEYNE  WALK  CIRCLE  OF  FRIENDS     331 

nessy  :  I  believe  it  was  exaggerated  to  the  extent  of 
being  untrue,  yet  still  not  without  some  sort  of  founda- 
tion. His  settled  employment  was  that  of  an  Assistant 
in  the  British  Museum,  in  that  branch  of  the  Natural 
History  Section  which  is  concerned  with  fishes.  All 
this  happened  before  the  Natural  History  had  been 
transferred  from  Bloomsbury  to  South  Kensington.  One 
day  O'Shaughnessy  visited  a  colleague  in  the  Section  of 
Entomology,  and  examined  a  drawer  full  of  specimens  of 
insects  of  various  genera.  The  drawer  got  overturned, 
the  insects  scattered,  and  partly  fractured.  What  was  to 
be  done  ?  O'Shaughnessy  (so  ran  the  legend)  was  par- 
tially equal  to  the  emergency,  and  attached  a  head  here, 
and  a  leg  there,  much  as  they  happened  to  come,  to 
insects  of  the  most  diverse  physique.  Later  on,  a  superior 
official  of  the  Entomological  Section  came  to  inspect  the 
drawer,  and  was  astonished  to  find  that  it  contained  a 
series  of  forms  so  little  known  in  the  scientific  categories. 
From  a  new  species  his  eye  wandered  to  a  new  genus, 
and  then  to  an  order  equally  new  and  novel.  Scrutiny 
showed  what  had  been  done,  and  inquiry  revealed  the 
responsibility  of  the  verse-writing  assistant.  It  was  an 
effort  of  formative  imagination  viewed  with  marked  dis- 
favour by  the  cautelous  devotees  of  science.  Such  was 
the  legend  ;  which,  as  already  observed,  I  conceive  to 
have  had  only  a  thin  nucleus  of  truth. 

Possibly  it  was  in  the  Arundel  Club  (near  the  Strand) 
that  Dante  Rossetti  first  met  Mr.  Joseph  Knight :  they 
were  also  frequently  together  in  the  literary  circle  of  the 
Marstons,  and  not  seldom  Mr.  Knight  was  a  welcome 
visitor  in  the  Cheyne  Walk  house.  This  gentleman, 
besides  his  multifarious  employments  in  the  way  of 
dramatic  criticism,  was  at  that  time  editor  of  The  Sunday 


332        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

Times,  later  on  of  Notes  and  Queries.  My  brother  valued 
his  discernment  in  poetical  and  other  matters,  and  liked 
his  manly  geniality,  harmonizing  with  a  very  handsome 
exterior.  Mr.  Knight  (as  it  may  be  hardly  necessary  to 
say)  became  in  1887  one  of  the  not  innumerous  bio- 
graphers of  Dante  Rossetti  ;  and,  among  all  the  records 
of  him  which  have  appeared,  none  is  written  in  a  kindlier 
or  fairer  spirit  than  that  of  Mr.  Knight — who  can  under- 
stand a  man  of  genius,  prize  his  fine  personal  and  in- 
tellectual qualities,  and  make  reasonable  allowance  for  his 
peculiarities  and  defects. 

Franz  Hiiffer,  PH.D.,  a  German  of  a  Roman  Catholic 
family  from  Munster,  a  man  learned  in  various  ways 
but  principally  concerned  with  matters  of  music,  came 
over  to  England  towards  1868,  and  soon  showed  a  dis- 
position to  settle  here  :  eventually  he  naturalized  himself 
as  an  Englishman,  and  was  known  as  Francis  HuefFer. 
He  made  acquaintance  with  Madox  Brown,  and  in  1872 
married  his  younger  daughter  Catharine  (more  generally 
called  Cathy).  Thus  he  became  a  sort  of  brother-in-law 
to  myself — husband  of  my  wife's  half-sister.  Dr.  Hueffer, 
who  acted  for  several  years  as  musical  critic  to  The  Times, 
was  a  man  of  very  marked  ability  :  loyal  to  the  standard 
of  poetical  and  literary  excellence  established  by  monu- 
mental works  of  the  past,  but  open  also  to  the  influences 
of  the  present  whenever  a  fresh  and  true  path  seemed  to 
be  struck  out.  As  an  intimate  of  Madox  Brown  he  saw 
a  good  deal  of  Dante  Rossetti,  and  of  myself;  after  he 
had  become  a  family-connexion  he  was  less  often  with  my 
brother,  who  was  shattered  in  health  in  the  summer  of 
1872,  and  out  of  London,  and  who,  when  he  re-settled 
here  in  1874,  had  adopted  the  habits  of  a  confirmed 
recluse.  HuefFer  was  a  rather  bulky  but  not  a  tall  man, 


CHEYNE  WALK  CIRCLE  OF  FRIENDS     333 

of  very  Teutonic  physiognomy  :  brilliant  ruddy  com- 
plexion, brilliant  yellow  hair,  blue  eyes  radiant  with 
quickness  and  penetration.  He  was  a  believer  in  Scho- 
penhauer ;  and,  though  not  a  melancholy  person  in  his 
ordinary  demeanour,  had  a  certain  tinge  of  hypochondria 
in  his  outlook  on  life.  The  family  to  which  he  belonged 
was  a  very  numerous  one — not  less,  I  think,  than  sixteen 
brothers  (or  half-brothers)  and  sisters,  domiciled  in 
various  parts  of  Europe.  All  of  them  were  well  off, 
more  or  less — at  least  two  being  strikingly  wealthy 
capitalists  :  Francis  Hueffer  however  had  to  depend 
chiefly  upon  his  own  literary  exertions  for  a  mainten- 
ance. In  January  1889,  aged  forty-three,  he  died  in 
London  very  suddenly,  of  heart-failure  coming  on  in  the 
course  of  an  attack  of  erysipelas.  He  left  a  widow  and 
three  children — Ford,  Oliver,  and  Juliet.  Ford  is  now 
an  author  of  rising  and  deserved  reputation  ;  Oliver  also 
has  published  some  books  showing  a  sprightly  talent, 
and  holds  an  advantageous  journalistic  position.  Juliet 
has  become  Mrs.  David  Soskice.  Madox  Brown,  though 
he  was  not  the  trustee  appointed  under  Francis  Hueffer's 
will,  came  forward  with  his  unfailing  warmth  and  energy 
of  affection,  and  was  the  mainstay  of  the  family  for  some 
trying  years  following  the  father's  death. 

Two  other  poets,  then  at  the  outset  of  their  career, 
whom  my  brother  knew  at  much  the  same  time  with 
O'Shaughnessy,  were  John  Payne  and  Edmund  Gosse. 
Mr.  Payne  is  now  probably  better  known  by  his  trans- 
lated work — from  Villon,  The  Thousand  and  One  Nightsy 
etc. — than  by  his  original  poems,  although  these  also 
continue  current  :  my  brother  had  a  good  opinion  of  his 
talents,  but  did  not  sympathize  with  his  choice  of  subject 
— especially  in  the  case  of  a  poem  about  a  vampire, 


334        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

Lautrec.  Mr.  Gosse  entertained  a  very  earnest  regard 
for  Rossetti's  powers  and  performances,  but  presumably 
he  was  not  very  often  in  his  house  :  I  myself,  in  the 
earlier  years  of  my  marriage,  saw  him  more  frequently. 
As  both  these  gentlemen  are  now  living,  and  in  the  en- 
joyment of  an  enviable  literary  reputation,  it  would 
scarcely  become  me  to  write  about  them  in  detail.  Mr. 
Payne  on  one  occasion  brought  my  wife  and  me  ac- 
quainted with  the  celebrated  French  poet  St£phane 
Mallarme.  We  liked  the  little  that  we  saw  of  M. 
Mallarme  :  he  was  a  man  of  solid  physique,  and  seem- 
ingly of  solid  rather  than  brilliant  qualities  of  mind.  But 
I  will  confess  that,  so  far  as  I  have  read  his  poems,  I 
seldom  enter  into  the  spirit  or  the  letter  of  them,  and 
appreciate  but  faintly  the  point  of  view  from  which  they 
are  fashioned. 

Mr.  Sidney  Colvin  was  not  unfrequently  with  us. 
He  was  at  that  time  a  declared  admirer  (and  I  presume 
he  may  still  be  so)  of  Dante  Rossetti's  work  both  in 
painting  and  in  verse,  and  he  took  a  somewhat  active 
part  in  upholding  the  latter  in  print,  especially  at  the 
date  of  Mr.  Robert  Buchanan's  vituperation.  Madox 
Brown  fancied — perhaps  a  mistake — that  his  son  Oliver 
had  been  treated  with  discourtesy  by  Mr.  Colvin,  whom 
after  a  while  I  saw  but  rarely.  I  had  not  myself  any 
sort  of  difference  with  him. 

Mr.  William  Davies,  whom  I  have  mentioned  in  con- 
nexion with  Mr.  Smetham,  was  not  a  constant  resident 
in  London  ;  but  when  here  he  called  pretty  often  on  my 
brother,  and  at  other  times  corresponded  with  him.  The 
book  by  which  he  is  best  known  is  entitled  The  Pilgrim- 
age of  the  Tiber :  he  was  besides  a  graceful  writer  in 
verse,  and  an  accomplished  etcher  on  a  small  scale.  Mr. 


CHEYNE  WALK  CIRCLE  OF  FRIENDS     335 

Davies  was  a  man  of  much  nervous  susceptibility,  and 
seldom  in  robust  health  :  he  was  well  qualified  to  com- 
prehend the  more  wayward  aspects  of  my  brother's 
feelings  and  habits  in  his  later  years,  and  I  could  not 
name  a  person  who  viewed  them  with  more  indulgence, 
or  treated  them  with  a  more  delicate  touch.  There  were 
many  points  of  mental  contact  between  the  two,  and 
cordial  friendliness  on  both  sides.  Mr.  Davies  survived 
Dante  Rossetti,  but  has  been  dead  now  for  several  years. 
He  was  so  good  as  to  present  to  me  the  series  (not  very 
long)  of  letters  which  he  had  received  from  my  brother, 
collected  into  a  volume. 

Dr.  Thomas  Gordon  Hake,  a  physician,  published 
anonymously  in  1840  a  strange  sort  of  romance  named 
VateS)  or  the  Philosophy  of  Madness^  with  equally  strange 
etchings  by  Thomas  Landseer  :  it  was  afterwards  re- 
named Valdarno,  or  the  Ordeal  of  Art  Worship.  My 
brother  read  it  towards  1844,  and  was  much  impressed 
by  its  exceptional  quality,  and  later  on  he  tried  to  find 
out  who  the  author,  then  living  abroad,  might  be.  In 
the  autumn  of  1869  Dr.  Hake,  who  had  by  that  time 
issued  some  poems  as  well,  called  upon  Rossetti  :  they 
liked  one  another  at  once,  and  became  fast  friends.  I 
need  not  repeat  all  the  details  I  have  given  in  my  Memoir 
of  Dante  Rossetti^  exhibiting  a  close  mutual  literary  inti- 
macy, and  the  essential  services  which  Dr.  Hake,  both 
as  friend  and  as  physician,  rendered  to  my  brother  in 
1872,  when  his  life  was  almost  despaired  of.  One  con- 
sequence was  that  George  Hake,  a  youthful  son  of  the 
doctor,  became  domesticated  with  my  brother  for  a  few 
years,  in  the  character  of  his  secretary.  They  parted 
about  1877,  under  circumstances  which  made  it  difficult 
for  Dr.  Hake  and  my  brother  to  continue  meeting  on 


336        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

the  same  terms  as  of  old.  This  proved  a  final  separation, 
although  some  genuine  friendly  feeling  continued  to  sub- 
sist on  both  sides.  I  deeply  regretted  the  disappearance 
of  Dr.  Hake,  and  indeed  that  of  his  son,  from  the  house 
in  Cheyne  Walk  :  the  doctor  was  not  only  one  of  the 
most  agreeable  and  cherished,  but  likewise  one  of  the 
most  judicious  and  useful,  associates  of  my  brother.  I 
need  hardly  say  that  I  also  valued  him  much,  and  was 
vividly  conscious  of  our  deep  debt  of  gratitude  to  him. 
His  poems  are  works  of  much  thought,  and  elaborated 
with  scrupulous  care  :  some  of  them  are  well  adapted  to 
touch  the  feelings  of  the  general  run  of  readers — others 
have  an  abstracted  and  not  very  tangible  tone. 

It  was  through  Dr.  Hake  that  my  brother  got  to  know 
Mr.  Walter  Theodore  Watts,  now  of  wide  fame  as 
Theodore  Watts-Dunton  :  their  first  meeting  seems  to 
have  been  late  in  1872.  Mr.  Watts-Dunton  was  at  that 
time  a  practising  solicitor,  with  the  beginning  of  a  liter- 
ary reputation — chiefly  in  critical  prose,  occasionally  also 
in  verse.  As  a  romancist  he  was  not  (outside  his  own 
circle)  known  until  1899,  when  Aylwin  leaped  into  celeb- 
rity. From  the  first  occasion  when  they  met,  Rossetti 
was  greatly  drawn  towards  Watts-Dunton.  He  prized  his 
critical  opinion  most  highly,  applauded  his  verses,  and 
was  indebted  to  him  for  countless  professional  services, 
and  still  more  for  a  profuse  ardour  of  friendship.  After 
their  first  meeting  at  Kelmscott  Manor  House,  Mr. 
Watts-Dunton  was  very  frequently  there  again  ;  and, 
upon  the  re-settlement  of  Rossetti  in  London  in  the 
summer  of  1874,  no  one  else  (and  the  remark  applies  to 
myself  as  well  as  to  friends  outside  the  family)  saw 
nearly  so  much  of  him.  I  should  in  strictness  except 
Mr.  Dunn,  who  was  very  generally  in  the  same  house, 


CHEYNE  WALK  CIRCLE  OF  FRIENDS     337 

and  Mr.  George  Hake  so  long  as  he  acted  as  secretary, 
and  from  July  1881  Mr.  Hall  Caine,  who  also  became 
an  inmate  in  the  house.  Owing  to  various  circumstances, 
and  more  especially  to  his  leaving  London  for  Man- 
chester in  1879,  Madox  Brown  was  not  so  constantly 
with  Rossetti  from  1878  onwards  as  his  well-proved 
affection  would  have  prompted  him  to  be.  The  merits 
of  Mr.  Watts-Dunton  as  a  friend  to  two  poets,  Swin- 
burne and  Rossetti,  have  been  so  unanimously  and  so 
warmly  recognized  that  little  remains  for  me  to  say  on 
the  subject  :  I  can  only  join  in  the  general  testimony. 
To  myself  also  he  has  been  a  very  hearty  and  helpful 
friend  :  I  was  frequently  with  him  during  my  brother's 
lifetime,  and  more  still  for  the  first  two  or  three  years 
after  Dante's  decease,  when  many  rather  complicated 
matters  had  to  be  unravelled,  calling  for  the  advice  of 
one  who  was  at  once  an  intimate  and  a  lawyer. 

The  Californian  poet  Joaquin  Miller  (in  strictness, 
Cincinnatus  H.  Miller)  was  personally  known  to  me  in 
1871,  about  the  time  when  he  brought  out  his  Songs  of 
the  Sierras — still,  I  judge,  his  best  book.  He  presented 
a  very  picturesque  figure  :  I  speak  of  him  in  the  past 
tense,  but  he  is  still  alive,  and  I  dare  say  still  picturesque. 
In  1903  I  again  heard  something  about  him  from  the 
Japanese  poet  Yone  Noguchi,  who  knew  him  well  in 
California.  He  was  of  fine  height,  with  long  abundant 
hair,  booted  and  spurred — being  a  famous  horseman  in 
his  horse-riding  country.  He  was  a  self-taught  poetic 
genius  ;  nurtured  upon  Byron,  and  in  a  minor  degree 
upon  Burns  and  Edgar  Poe  :  he  must  have  known  the 
work  of  some  other  poets,  earlier  and  later,  but  I  cannot 
remember  that  (making  an  exception  for  Christina 
Rossetti,  for  whose  work  he  professed  extreme  admira- 


338        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

tion)  he  set  much  count  upon  any  of  them.  Miller  was 
evidently  a  man  of  susceptible  feelings,  but  rather  back- 
ward in  social  converse  :  he  had  the  ambition  to  excel 
in  his  art,  with  some  self-confidence  as  to  his  innate 
faculty,  but  nothing  like  a  presumptuous  assurance  that 
he  had  as  yet  succeeded.  In  this  respect  he  was  modest, 
with  the  modesty  of  a  proud  nature.  London  and 
London  life  did  not  much  suit  him  :  after  a  little 
experience  of  it  he  was  glad  to  get  away,  and  to  resume 
a  more  untrammelled  and  adventurous  career.  The  then 
well-frequented  house  of  Madox  Brown  gave  him  more 
satisfaction  than  any  other  to  which  he  had  the  entree. 
After  two  London  visits  I  had  some  little  correspondence 
with  him  ;  but  I  question  whether  he  has  again  been  in 
England.  He  must  have  appeared  once  or  twice  in  the 
Cheyne  Walk  house,  but  I  do  not  remember  to  have  met 
him  there  :  I  saw  him  in  Endsleigh  Gardens  and  else- 
where. 

I  had  not  the  honour  of  being  known  to  the  lady 
whose  literary  name  is  George  Eliot,  but  whom  I  shall 
here  call  Mrs.  Lewes.  On  one  occasion  however,  in 
1869,  I  was  informed  by  Bell  Scott  that  Mrs.  Jefferson 
Hogg  (the  "Jane  Williams"  celebrated  by  Shelley)  was 
to  be  met  at  times  at  the  Lewes*  house,  in  North  Road, 
Regent's  Park  ;  and  Scott  obtained  leave  to  bring  me 
round  one  Sunday  afternoon,  when  Mrs.  Hogg,  whom  I 
was  naturally  anxious  to  see,  was  expected  to  be  a  visitor. 
In  this  expectation  I  was  disappointed.  As  previously 
observed,  I  knew  Lewes  in  some  minor  degree,  and  I  was 
now  introduced  to  Mrs.  Lewes,  and  talked  with  her  a 
good  deal.  Shelley,  for  whom  she  expressed  warm  ad- 
miration, was  one  of  our  topics — by  no  means  the  only 
one.  It  is  well  known  that  Mrs.  Lewes  was  a  woman 


CHEYNE  WALK  CIRCLE  OF  FRIENDS     339 

with  next  to  no  feminine  beauty  or  charm  of  countenance 
or  person  :  she  was,  in  fact,  plain  to  the  extent  of  being 
ugly.  Her  conversation  was  able  and  spirited  :  and  in 
talking  her  face  lit  up  in  a  degree  which  impressed  me, 
and  which  almost  effaced  her  natural  uncomeliness.  I 
was  encouraged  to  call  again  ;  but,  as  it  happened,  I  never 
did  so,  and  I  saw  Mrs.  Lewes  no  more.  I  am  aware  of 
the  high  claims  made  for  her  books,  and  of  the  reasons 
on  which  those  claims  are  based.  They  never  much 
attracted  me,  and  I  am  to  this  day  but  very  imperfectly 
acquainted  with  them.  She  wrote  a  few  letters  to  my 
brother,  in  a  tone  of  handsome  recognition. 

My  account  of  persons  whom  I  knew  in  Cheyne  Walk 
applies  principally  to  the  period  from  1862  to  1872  ; 
although  at  times,  as  in  the  case  of  Watts-Dunton,  I  go 
on  to  a  later  date.  I  will  mention  two  other  authors  who 
were  in  that  house,  but  only  in  a  casual  way,  and  not  so 
as  to  become  personal  friends  of  any  standing. 

The  first  was  Ivan  Turgu£nief,  who  was  introduced  in 
Cheyne  Walk  by  Mr.  William  Ralston,  and  who  on  one 
occasion  dined  with  us.  I  never  saw  a  man  more 
impressive  than  Turguenief  in  person,  and  in  the  tone  of 
his  conversation.  He  was  of  massive  and  stately  form, 
and  extremely  handsome.  Whatever  he  said  seemed, 
without  undue  emphasis,  forcible  and  decisive.  I  have 
often  regretted  that  circumstances  did  not  allow  of  our 
seeing  more  of  him.  During  my  brother's  last  illness  he 
expressed,  through  Mr.  Ralston,  a  strong  inclination  to 
call  again,  but  the  conditions  made  this  unmanageable. 

In  the  summer  of  1869  Longfellow  called  upon  my 
brother  (I  was  not  there),  with  Mr.  Fields  of  Boston, 
but  otherwise  unheralded,  simply  as  one  man  of  note 
who  wished  to  see  another  face  to  face.  He  was  not 


34o        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

however  aware  that  Rossetti  the  poet  was  the  same  per- 
son as  Rossetti  the  painter  ;  he  fancied  that  they  were 
two  brothers,  attributing  (I  infer)  the  translations  of 
The  Early  Italian  Poets  and  some  few  original  poems  to 
the  same  person,  myself,  who  had  translated  Dante's 
Inferno.  He  had  at  one  time  looked  at  the  published 
version.  Dante  Gabriel,  in  a  pleasant  interview,  showed 
Longfellow  what  he  could  in  the  way  of  paintings.  As 
they  were  about  to  part,  the  author  of  Hiawatha  said — 
"  I  wish  I  could  have  seen  your  brother  the  poet,  but 
for  that  I  shall  not  now  have  an  opportunity."  "  I  will 
tell  him  so,"  replied  Dante  Gabriel.  And  so  Longfellow 
departed  unenlightened  as  to  the  facts. 

Besides  artists  and  writers,  a  very  necessary  class  of 
persons  for  Rossetti  to  know  was  that  of  picture-buyers. 
Ruskin,  long  before  he  lost  sight  of  my  brother,  had 
ceased  to  buy.  The  purchasing  period  of  Boyce,  of 
Thomas  E.  Flint,  of  William  Morris,  belonged  mainly 
or  wholly  to  the  days  of  Chatham  Place,  and  not  of 
Cheyne  Walk.  So  likewise  with  Colonel  Gillum,  a 
gentleman  whom  my  brother  and  Madox  Brown  had 
first  known  through  the  introduction  of  Browning  : 
he  bought  some  few  works,  and  has  long  (as  well  as 
his  wife)  been  prominent  in  the  philanthropic  world, 
devoting  time,  patience,  and  money,  to  the  reclaiming  of 
"  street  Arabs  "  etc.  Frederick  Craven  was  a  purchaser, 
but  seldom  made  his  appearance  in  London.  In  Cheyne 
Walk  the  principal  buyers — besides  James  Leathart,  pre- 
viously named — were  George  Rae,  Frederick  R.  Leyland, 
William  Graham,  and  Leonard  R.  Valpy,  and  in  a  minor 
degree  James  Anderson  Rose,  George  Clabburn,  and 
Lord  Mount-Temple  (Mr.  Cowper-Temple)  :  Messrs. 
Clarence  Fry,  Constantine  lonides,  and  William  A. 


CHEYNE  WALK  CIRCLE  OF  FRIENDS     341 

Turner,  belong  to  a  late  date  in  Rossetti's  career.  Some 
of  .these  —  Valpy,  Clabburn,  Lord  Mount-Temple,  and 
Fry,  I  saw  but  very  little.  To  Mr.  Graham  I  felt  sin- 
cerely attached,  owing  chiefly  to  the  thorough  friendli- 
ness of  his  conduct  to  my  brother  when  invalided  in 
1872.  One  of  his  daughters  married  Mr.  Quintin 
Hogg,  the  munificent  re-founder  of  the  Polytechnic 
Institution  in  London,  and  in  other  ways  a  leading  phil- 
anthropist. Mr.  Rae  (of  Birkenhead)  I  regarded  as  a 
personal  friend,  and  a  valued  one  ;  and  I  was  more  than 
pleased  with  both  Mr.  Turner  (of  Manchester)  and  his 
wife.  Mr.  Leyland,  the  wealthy  Liverpool  shipowner, 
was  not  so  attractive  to  me  :  he  was  however  a  man  of 
judgment  and  refinement,  and  had  a  keen  affection  for 
my  brother.  Mr.  Anderson  Rose,  a  solicitor,  was  very 
amicable  to  both  of  us  ;  my  brother,  in  his  later  years, 
lost  sight  of  him,  but  I  had  personal  and  business  rela- 
tions with  him  till  almost  the  close  of  his  life.  He  acted 
for  Mr.  Whistler  in  the  action  against  Ruskin.  Mr. 
lonides  I  met  every  now  and  then,  and  other  members 
of  the  same  family,  on  an  agreeable  footing.  Four  of 
these  gentlemen  —  Leathart,  Leyland,  Graham,  and  Tur- 
ner —  formed  considerable  collections  of  Rossetti's  works, 
all  now  dispersed  ;  that  of  Mr.  Rae  (who  died  in  1902 
at  an  advanced  age)  remains  intact.  Lord  Mount- 
Temple's  chief  specimen  is  in  the  National  British 
Gallery  ;  that  of  Mr.  Fry,  in  the  Manchester  Art  Col- 
lection ;  that  of  Mr.  lonides,  in  the  Victoria  and  Albert 
Museum  —  also  one  or  two  which  belonged  to  Mr. 
Craven.  Mr.  Valpy  was  at  one  time  the  owner  of  the 
large  painting,  Dante's  Dream  ;  which  reverted  after  a 
while  to  Rossetti,  and  is  now  in  the  Walker  Art  Gallery 
of  Liverpool. 


V 


342        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

I  did  not  meet  in  Cheyne  Walk  many  persons  who 
could  not  be  classed  as  either  artists,  writers,  or  picture-- 
buyers. I  was  well  acquainted  at  that  period  with  some 
members  of  the  Greek  community  in  London,  but  rather 
in  their  own  houses  than  in  ours.  These  were  especially 
Mr.  Michael  Spartali  and  his  family.  His  daughter 
Marie,  as  gracious  and  amiable  as  she  is  beautiful,  and 
one  of  my  most  cherished  friends,  herself  the  painter  of 
many  accomplished  pictures,  married  Mr.  Stillman  in 
1871.  Another  Greek  whom  I  regarded  with  sincere 
predilection  was  Stauros  Dilberoglue,  a  merchant  in  the 
City.  To  Mr.  Charles  Augustus  Howell,  a  most  con- 
stant visitor  from  1864  onwards,  I  shall  not  here  recur. 
Mr.  Frederick  S.  Ellis,  the  publisher  and  bookseller,  of 
whom  I  have  already  spoken  with  high  regard,  was  often 
in  the  house  ;  and  every  now  and  then  Mr.  Murray 
Marks,  the  art-dealer,  then  carrying  on  business  in 
Oxford  Street. 


XXII 
SOME   FOREIGN   TRIPS,   ETC. 

f  PROPOSE  to  give  here  some  brief  account  of  what 
little  I  have  done  in  the  way  of  travelling,  up  to  the 
date  of  my  marriage  in  the  spring  of  1 874.  Not  that  there 
is  anything  worth  recording,  in  essence  or  in  detail :  but 
matters  of  this  sort  form  a  considerable  part  of  one's 
outer  and  inner  experiences,  especially  when  the  general 
tenor  of  life  has  been  so  uneventful  as  in  my  own  case. 
Such  recollections,  moreover,  are  pleasant  to  oneself,  and 
for  what  they  are  worth,  they  may  find  a  place  here. 

After  a  childhood,  and  more  markedly  a  boyhood,  in 
which  1  was  scarcely  out  of  London  at  all,  but  in  which 
the  idea  of  extensive  and  adventurous  travel  was  always 
highly  attractive  to  my  mind,  I  had  my  first  sight  of  the 
sea,  as  previously  stated,  at  Herne  Bay  in  1846 — age 
getting  on  towards  seventeen.  Other  seaside  resorts 
which  I  visited  at  one  time  or  another  are  Brighton,  the 
Isle  of  Wight  (especially  Ventnor  and  Freshwater), 
Hastings,  Tynemouth,  and  Eastbourne.  This  went  on  to 
1859,  after  which  my  main  holiday-excursion  was  always 
made  abroad — mostly  in  Italy.  In  1850  I  stayed  awhile 
in  Edinburgh,  which  I  have  revisited  more  than  once  ; 
and  I  then  got  as  far  north  as  Loch  Lomond.  That 
remained  my  only  glimpse  of  the  Highlands  until  1901, 
when  I  was  in  Inveraray,  Glen  Goyle,  and  Roseneath  ; 

343 


344        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

and  in  1903  I  made,  with  my  daughter  Mary,  a  steamer- 
trip  right  round  Great  Britain  up  to  the  Isle  of  Orkney. 
From  Edinburgh  in  1850  I  went  to  Newcastle-on-Tyne, 
by  invitation  of  William  Bell  Scott :  I  was  there  again  four 
or  five  times,  up  to  1862.  In  one  instance  I  proceeded 
from  Newcastle  to  Ulleswater  :  this,  followed  by  Coniston 
in  1900,  is  about  all  that  I  know  of  the  Lake-country. 

Until  1853  I  had  never  crossed  the  Channel.  I  then 
went  to  Paris  by  the  Dieppe  route.  To  feel  the  fascina- 
tion of  Paris  appears  to  be  well-nigh  an  instinct  of  the 
civilized  man,  and  I  was  amply  conscious  of  it.  In  1853 
the  vast  Parisian  changes  which  Napoleon  III  started  as 
a  sop  to  the  working-classes  after  his  coup  cTttat  were  still 
far  from  finished,  and  were  in  active  progress — the 
extension  of  the  Rue  de  Rivoli  begun  but  not  com- 
pleted, the  new  portion  of  the  Louvre,  with  friezes, 
sculptures,  etc.,  getting  forward.  Since  then  I  have  been 
in  Paris  a  great  number  of  times — I  surmise,  forty  or 
upwards  :  I  have  seldom  however  stayed  there  so  much 
as  a  fortnight  together.  Next  year,  1854,  I  made  a  little 
trip  in  Belgium — Bruges,  Antwerp,  Brussels,  Ghent, 
Malines,  Liege  ;  and  on  to  Aix-la-Chapelle  and  Coblentz, 
and  thence  down  the  Rhine  to  Rotterdam.  In  sailing 
from  Rotterdam  to  England  we  encountered  very  rough 
weather ;  and  the  captain,  on  reaching  the  extreme  point 
of  land  in  Holland,  declined  to  proceed  any  further  until 
three  days  had  elapsed.  In  1855,  Demg  the  year  of  the 
Universal  Exhibition  in  Paris,  I  was  there  again.  This 
exhibition  was  in  many  respects  more  extensive  and 
complete  than  the  London  Great  Exhibition  of  1851, 
with  its  "  Crystal  Palace  " *  in  Hyde  Park  :  more  parti- 

1  The  term  "  Crystal  Palace "  was  invented  by  some  writer  in  The 
Spectator,  as  I  was  told  by  the  Editor. 


SOME   FOREIGN   TRIPS,   ETC.          345 

cularly  it  included  a  vast  show  of  the  paintings  of  all 
nations,  of  which  there  had  been  no  trace  in  the  London 
display.  I  naturally  felt  the  keenest  interest  in  looking 
at  this  collection,  in  which  the  great  French  painters  of 
Louis  Philippe's  time  were  amply  represented — Ingres, 
Delaroche,  Delacroix,  Decamps,  Scheffer,  and  some 
others  ;  and  I  formed,  what  I  have  ever  since  retained, 
the  conviction  that,  whatever  may  be  said  in  behalf  of  in- 
dividual masters  in  other  lands,  the  French  school  stands 
clearly  at  the  head  of  the  pictorial  art  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  There  was  also,  separate  from  the  Universal 
Exhibition,  a  gallery  in  which  Gustave  Courbet  had  col- 
lected several  of  his  paintings.  I  had  recently  heard 
Courbet  spoken  of  as  if  he  were  doing  in  France  much 
the  same  sort  of  work  that  the  Praeraphaelites  had  set 
going  in  England.  I  amply  admired  much  of  what  I  here 
saw  of  Courbet's  art :  but  I  perceived  that,  both  in  spirit 
and  in  method,  he  was  on  a  distinctly  different  tack  from 
the  Praeraphaelites,  aiming  at  naturalism  through  breadth, 
whereas  they  strove  to  embody  inventive  thought  through 
exactitude  of  detail.  It  almost  amounted  to  the  diver- 
gence between  the  external  and  the  internal.  I  did  not 
feel  any  wish  that  the  Praeraphaelites  should  exchange 
their  conception  of  art  for  that  of  Courbet  :  but  that  they 
should  import  into  their  work  some  of  his  directness  of 
view  and  powerful  handling  would  obviously  have  been 
so  far  a  gain. 

Normandy  was  my  resort  in  1856 — Rouen,  Bayeux, 
Caen,  Coutances,  etc.,  and  finally  Granville,  whence  I 
took  the  steamer  to  Jersey.  Before  leaving  Normandy 
I  had  made  a  steamer-trip  to  Mont  St.  Michel,  and  the 
coast  where  the  borders  of  Normandy  and  Brittany 
come  together.  It  happened  to  be  the  first  steamer  (so 


346        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

I  was  assured)  which  had  ever  visited  that  point  of 
Brittany  :  primitive-looking  Bretons  came  along,  con- 
templating the  steamer  with  wide-open  eyes.  The 
quicksands  hereabouts  are  anything  but  secure  footing. 
I  foolishly  separated  from  my  fellow  excursionists,  and 
walked  about  on  the  sands,  which  soon  proved  to  be 
quicksands,  and  I  sank  up  to  my  knees.  No  one  was  at 
hand  ;  few  people,  if  any,  in  sight.  Some  efforts  at  ex- 
tricating myself  proved  abortive,  and  I  suspected  my 
case  to  be  a  parlous  one  enough  ;  at  last,  however,  one 
wrench  availed  more  than  those  which  had  preceded  it,. 
and  I  found  myself  on  my  feet  once  more.  I  wanted  no 
further  risks  with  quicksands,  and  made  my  way  back 
again.  A  different  yet  somewhat  similar  experience  be- 
fell me  at  Eastbourne  in  1859.  I  entered  a  bathing- 
machine  on  an  afternoon  of  high  tide  and  heavy  ground- 
swell,  and  began  bathing  :  but  soon  I  was  carried  off  my 
feet,  and  buffeted  against  some  rocky  bluffs  covered  with 
acorn  shells  with  their  razor-like  edges.  After  a  while 
I  saw  nothing  for  it  but  to  commit  myself  to  the  waves, 
lying  flat  on  my  back.  I  was  borne  out  to  sea,  but  not 
for  long  ;  as  my  plight  was  observed  from  the  bathing 
station,  and  a  boat  was  sent  out,  and  picked  me  up  in  a 
state  of  some  exhaustion.  Every  man,  or  rather  every 
boy,  ought  to  learn  to  swim  :  I,  carelessly  or  stupidly, 
never  did  so. 

When  at  Caen  I  entered  a  court  of  justice,  and  was 
witness  to  a  curious  scene.  An  elderly  postmistress  was 
on  her  trial  for  some  malversation  in  her  office,  amount- 
ing to  forgery  or  little  less.  She  had  (as  alleged)  signed 
a  document,  whereby  she  obtained  some  money  not  due 
to  her.  The  poor  old  lady  was  in  a  highly  nervous  con- 
dition :  the  magistrate  put  some  searching  questions  to 


SOME   FOREIGN  TRIPS,   ETC.          347 

her,  and  remarked  "  On  voit  bien  a  1'ecriture  que  votre 
main  tremblait " — to  which  she  made  no  reply.  To  me 
the  evidence  against  her  appeared  more  than  sufficiently 
clear.  Her  avocat  rose,  a  vigorous  good-looking  man 
hardly  twenty-eight  years  of  age,  and  made  a  telling 
passionate  speech  in  her  defence.  Naturally  he  con- 
tended that  the  accusation  was  not  true  ;  but  the  real  gist 
of  his  speech  was  more  an  appeal  to  the  sentiment  of 
the  jury  than  a  confutation  of  the  alleged  and  undeni- 
able facts.  As  soon  as  he  had  finished  he  resumed  his 
seat,  and  the  tears  ran  along  his  cheeks — a  case,  I  am 
sure,  of  unfeigned  emotion.  The  magistrate  then  set 
down  various  questions,  some  six  or  seven,  for  the  jury 
to  answer  :  such  as — "  Did  the  defendant  sign  the 
paper  ?  Did  she  sign  with  a  fraudulent  intent  ?  Did 
she,"  etc.  etc.  The  jury  retired,  and  very  soon  returned. 
They  answered  all  the  questions  with  "  Non,  non,  non  " 
— and  thus  the  old  lady  was  acquitted. 

My  first  visit  to  Italy  was  made,  .as  already  shown,  in 
1860,  in  company  with  Mr.  Vernon  Lushington.  Our 
chief  goal  was  Florence  ;  but  we  saw  besides  various 
other  cities — Como,  Milan,  Parma,  Piacenza,  Bologna, 
Pisa,  Siena,  Leghorn,  Genoa.  I  visited  also  the  birth- 
place of  my  grandfather  Polidori,  a  small  town  named 
Bientina,  not  far  from  Pisa.  I  had  often  heard  him 
speak  of  a  "  Lago  di  Bientina  "  ;  but  this  sheet  of  water, 
whatever  might  have  been  its  dimensions  towards  1788 
when  he  bade  a  final  adieu  to  Tuscany,  was  not  to  be 
discovered  in  1860 — it  had  been  drained  away.  The 
whole  experience  was,  and  could  not  but  be,  one  of  the 
leading  landmarks  in  my  life.  To  pass  through  Switzer- 
land and  cross  Mount  St.  Gothard  (by  diligence,  several 
years  before  the  tunnel  was  pierced)  was  not  less  won- 


348        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

derful  to  me  than  to  see  the  glories  of  my  father's  native 
country.  I  felt  it  not  far  from  being  my  own  native 
country  as  well,  and  found  myself  very  much  at  home 
with  Italians — their  tone  of  mind  and  perception,  their 
habits  and  address,  their  language,  so  early  familiar  to 
me  but  of  late  years  seldom  heard.  Except  in  1861, 
1863,  1870,  and  1872,  I  returned  to  Italy  in  all  the 
years  subsequent  to  1860,  up  to  1874  inclusive.  In 
1862  Venice  and  Rome  were  the  principal  places  of  so- 
journ ;  in  1865  North  Italy,  with  Milan,  Pavia,  Brescia, 
and  Verona;  in  1866  Naples;  in  1868  Mantua  and 
Venice;  in  1871  Ravenna  and  Viareggio  ;  in  1873 
Florence,  Rome,  and  Venice  ;  in  1874  Naples.  In  most 
instances  I  travelled  alone  ;  but  in  1862  I  was  in  com- 
pany with  William  Bell  Scott,  and  we  saw  something  of 
Inchbold  in  Venice  and  of  Stillman  in  Albano.  In  1865 
I  was  with  my  mother  and  Christina — the  only  occasion 
when  either  of  them  set  foot  in  Italy.  Great  was  Chris- 
tina's delight  both  with  Italy  and  with  the  Alps  ;  in- 
deed it  was  sufficiently  apparent  that  the  Italian  amenity, 
naturalness,  and  freedom  from  self-centred  stiffness, 
struck  a  chord  in  her  sympathies  to  which  a  good  deal 
of  what  she  was  used  to  in  England  offered  no  response. 
If  Christina,  along  with  our  mother,  could  at  this  time 
have  made  up  her  mind  to  live  permanently  in  Italy,  it 
would,  I  fancy,  have  suited  her  much  the  best  both  for 
health  and  for  mental  satisfaction.  Besides  her  mother's 
companionship,  she  would  have  required  as  indispen- 
sable a  church  of  the  Anglican  communion  at  which  to 
worship  :  this  is  readily  attainable  in  any  large  Italian 
city.  But  to  entertain  such  an  idea  as  a  practical  alter- 
native is  a  very  different  thing  from  contemplating  it 
with  the  mind's  eye  as  alluring  :  and  it  never  presented 


SOME   FOREIGN   TRIPS,   ETC.          349 

itself  to  any  of  us  under  the  guise  of  practicability.  In 
1869  (as  I  mentioned  in  my  eleventh  section)  my  travel- 
ling companion  was  John  Lucas  Tupper.  When  he  fell 
alarmingly  ill  in  Florence,  I  had  the  great  gratification 
and  relief  of  finding  on  the  spot  Mr.  Holman  Hunt,  who, 
being  fully  as  intimate  as  I  was  with  Tupper,  took  an  active 
part  in  warding  him  off  from  the  brink  of  the  grave.  My 
cousin  Teodorico  Pietrocola-Rossetti  and  his  wife  (now 
Mrs.  Lionel  Cole)  were  also  most  kindly  and  helpful.  In 
1873  I  travelled  in  a  party  of  five  :  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Bell 
Scott,  Miss  Boyd,  and  Lucy  Brown,  with  myself  as  fifth. 
In  Naples  in  1866  it  was  my  good  hap  to  see  the  im- 
mortal author  of  Monte  Cristo,  Alexandre  Dumas,  the 
most  good-natured-looking  as  the  most  illustrious  of 
quadroons.  I  merely  saw  him  however  as  he  was  taking 
ship  on  his  return  to  France  from  Italy.  This  was  the 
year  of  the  Prussian-Italian  war  against  Austria,  which 
resulted  in  the  liberation  of  Venetia.  Some  days  after 
Dumas  had  departed,  I  entered  a  steamer  of  a  different 
and  less  commodious  line,  paying  my  passage  up  to 
Marseilles.  The  steamer  had  on  board  various  pieces  of 
cannon  and  munitions  of  war  ;  and  it  turned  out  that 
her  movements  were  in  great  measure  dependent  upon 
military  considerations.  She  went  along  in  a  very  lagging 
style,  and  at  last  I  had  to  content  myself  with  getting  out 
at  Genoa,  as  she  was  stopped  short  from  going  on  to 
Marseilles.  I  had  before  1866  seen  Venice  twice  under 
the  Austrian  yoke  ;  and  the  reader  may  guess  how  much 
elated  I  felt  in  returning  a  year  or  two  afterwards,  when 
every  trace  of  the  abhorred  white  uniform  had  vanished 
from  the  Piazza  di  San  Marco  and  the  labyrinth  of 
canals.  The  wings  of  the  Lion  of  St.  Mark  were  once 
more  unfurled  for  a  flight. 


350        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

Anything  worth  calling  an  adventure  seldom  befell  me 
in  my  trips.  The  least  insignificant  incident  of  the  kind 
was  in  1868,  when,  leaving  Mantua,  I  travelled  through 
Verona  to  Venice.  I  had  by  me  a  sum  of  about  800 
francs,  which  I  had  deposited  in  a  locked  hat-box,  kept 
in  my  own  railway-carriage.  At  Verona  there  was  a 
stoppage  of  a  couple  of  hours  or  so,  and  a  change  of 
trains  ;  and  the  hat-box  passed  for  a  while  out  of  my 
personal  custody.  On  arriving  in  Venice,  I  looked  into 
it,  and  all  the  money  was  gone.  Various  inquiries 
ensued  ;  but  I  never  recovered  any  of  it,  and  never  knew 
with  precision  whether  it  had  been  stolen  in  Verona,  or 
possibly  at  an  earlier  hour  in  Mantua.  My  remaining 
funds  were  of  the  scantiest ;  but,  writing  to  Dante 
Gabriel,  I  soon  received  a  sum  about  equal  to  what  I  had 
lost,  and  all  went  well  with  me  again. 

In  Italy  I  did  not  at  any  time  see  much  of  persons 
known  to  me.  In  1860  there  were  (as  previously  noted) 
the  Brownings,  the  Story  family,  Landor,  Burges,  and 
the  Barone  Kirkup,  whose  personal  acquaintance  I  then 
made  for  the  first  time.  He  was  aged  about  seventy  in 
1860.  I  am  aware  that  some  people  now  doubt  whether 
Giotto  painted  the  fresco  in  the  Bargello  which  was 
recovered  from  whitewash  through  Kirkup's  exertions, 
and  whether  the  person  represented  is  Dante  :  for  my 
own  part,  I  should  be  very  sorry  to  disbelieve  either  ot 
these  assumptions.  Kirkup  in  1860  was  an  interesting 
talker,  reminiscent  of  many  matters  of  old  date  in  the 
intellectual  life  of  England,  learned  in  the  earlier  Italian 
literature,  and  (as  I  have  said)  much  addicted  to 
"  spiritualism."  He  possessed  a  sofa  which  Shelley  had 
bought  in  Pisa  in  1821,  and  which  is  now  mine  :  he  and 
I  sat  on  it  as  we  talked  together.  He  was  then  already 


SOME   FOREIGN   TRIPS,   ETC.          351 

not  a  little  deaf;  this  infirmity,  along  with  failure  of 
sight,  increased  upon  him  before  he  died  in  1879,  or 
early  in  1880,  a  nonagenarian.  In  1866,  in  Naples,  I  re- 
encountered  Dr.  Robert  Sim,  a  Scotchman  whom  I  had 
known  a  little  in  London,  in  the  company  of  Mr. 
Holman  Hunt,  several  years  before  ;  he  introduced  me 
to  the  house  of  Mr.  Hirsch,  a  Jewish  financier — the 
same,  I  presume,  who  was  afterwards  known  as  the 
beneficent  millionaire  Baron  Hirsch.  He  also  introduced 
me  to  the  amiable  Madame  Meuricoffre  and  her  hus- 
band. In  1869,  being  in  Florence  with  Pietrocola- 
Rossetti,  I  met  two  distinguished  friends  of  my  father, 
whom  I  myself  had  seen  in  boyhood — Conte  Giuseppe 
Ricciardi,  a  revolutionary  patriot,  then  a  member  of 
Parliament,  and  Conte  Carlo  Pepoli,  then  a  senator,  and 
known  of  old  to  the  poet  Leopardi.  It  may  have  been 
in  the  same  year  that  Pietrocola-Rossetti  introduced  me 
to  Mr.  Jarves,  an  American  art-collector  and  writer,  and 
his  wife  :  I  saw  them  again  at  Viareggio  in  1871. 

Before  leaving  London  in  1 873  I  was  asked  by  Edward 
John  Trelawny  (commonly  known  as  Captain  Trelawny) 
to  fulfil  a  small  commission  from  him  in  Florence.  Of 
Trelawny  himself  I  shall  have  more  to  say  in  the  sequel. 

For  some  while  previously  Miss  Clare  Clairmont,  the 
quasi-sister  of  Mary  Wollstonecraft  Shelley,  and  famous 
in  the  lives  of  Shelley  and  of  Byron,  had  been  carrying 
on  from  Florence  a  correspondence  with  Trelawny,  send- 
ing copies  of  old  letters  relating  to  Shelley  and  others, 
and  representing  the  inconveniences  under  which  she 
was  suffering,  from  ill-health  and  narrow  means.  Tre- 
lawny used  to  show  me  her  letters,  so  I  know  pretty  well 
(or  at  least  then  knew)  what  they  contained.  She  made 
some  advances  towards  offering  to  sell  to  him  a  number 


352        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

of  documents  in  her  possession  concerning  Shelley  and 
Byron.  Trelawny  was  among  the  most  generous  of 
men  :  but  it  would  not  have  suited  him,  from  any  point 
of  view,  to  "  buy  a  pig  in  a  poke,"  and  he  wished  me  to 
ascertain,  by  personal  conference  with  Miss  Clairmont, 
what  was  the  number  of  documents  which  she  was 
prepared  to  produce,  of  what  nature,  and  at  what  price. 
Moreover  he  considerably  mistrusted  Miss  Clairmont  as 
regards  her  animus  against  Byron — who  had  at  one  time 
been  her  lover,  and  who  had  afterwards  used  her  badly, 
inspiring  her  with  a  sentiment  of  lifelong  rancour.  He 
therefore  wished,  if  he  treated  for  any  documents,  to 
receive  among  them  such  as  might,  in  other  hands,  be 
used  to  blacken  the  memory  of  Byron,  for  whom 
Trelawny,  in  the  years  when  I  knew  him,  had  no  small 
feeling  of  kindly  regard  :  this  becomes  apparent  on  com- 
paring his  first  volume,  Recollections  of  the  Last  Days  of 
Shelley  and  Byron,  1858,  with  his  enlarged  re-cast,  Records 
of  Shelley,  Byron,  and  the  Author,  1878.  On  reaching 
Florence  I  addressed  Miss  Clairmont,  and  obtained 
permission  to  call  on  her  at  her  residence  in  the  Via 
Valfonda.  Unfortunately  she  was  then  in  a  condition 
not  at  all  suited  for  attending  minutely  to  Trelawny' s 
requirements.  She  had  recently  had  a  fall,  and  I  found 
her  lying  outside  her  bed,  unable  to  move  about  the 
room  so  as  to  bring  out  and  explain  her  papers.  She 
received  me  with  much  affable  courtesy  on  14  and  more 
especially  on  15  June,  spoke  freely  and  with  affection  of 
Shelley  (Byron  I  think  she  never  named),  and  expressed 
a  high  sense  of  Trelawny's  friendliness.  I  made  after 
the  interviews  some  notes  of  the  conversation ;  but  these 
I  can  no  longer  find,  and  I  regret  to  have  forgotten  the 
details.  She  asked  me  to  join  at  lunch  her  niece,  Miss 


SOME   FOREIGN  TRIPS,   ETC.         353 

Paola  Clairmont,  who  kept  house  with  her,  and  then  to 
return  to  the  bedroom  for  a  little  further  colloquy.  I  as- 
suredly was  glad  to  comply  ;  and  I  took  the  meal  with 
Miss  Paola,  and  a  relative  of  hers,  a  prepossessing  little 
girl  aged  ten  or  eleven.  I  came  away  with  my  mission 
unaccomplished,  though  attended  to  to  the  best  of  my 
opportunity.  Trelawny  did  not  at  any  time  come  into 
possession  of  the  Clairmont  documents.  Later  on  I  knew 
an  American,  Mr.  E.  A.  Silsbee,  a  very  ardent  Shelleyite, 
who  was  well  acquainted  with  Miss  Clairmont,  and 
anxious  to  secure  the  papers  :  he  also  was  disappointed. 
But  most  of  the  documents,  perhaps  all  of  them,  are  for 
many  years  past  in  excellent  hands — those  of  Mr.  Harry 
Buxton  Forman.  He  has  very  liberally  allowed  me  to 
see  them,  and  even  to  keep  them  by  me  for  a  while,  for 
the  information  of  myself,  and  also  of  my  wife  when  she 
was  preparing  her  volume  Mrs.  Shelley  (published  in 
1890)  ;  I  therefore  know  that  Mr.  Forman  is  here  in 
possession  of  a  very  covetable  body  of  materials  for 
throwing  light  on  the  careers  of  two  of  our  greatest  poets, 
and  of  many  persons  in  their  circle. 

It  appears  to  be  ascertained  that  Miss  Clairmont  was 
born  in  1798  :  consequently,  when  I  saw  her  in  June 
1873,  she  was  about  seventy-five  years  of  age.  She  was 
a  slender  and  pallid  old  lady,  with  thinned  hair  which 
had  once  been  dark,  and  with  dark  and  still  expressive 
eyes  :  she  was,  according  to  her  own  statement,  more 
than  moderately  deaf.  Her  face  was  such  as  one  could 
easily  suppose  to  have  been  handsome  and  charming  in 
youth — her  voice  was  clear,  even-toned,  and  agreeable. 
As  I  saw  her  however,  she  had,  in  the  fullest  sense, 
passed  into  the  period  of  old  age  :  so  far  as  that  goes, 
there  was  nothing  to  distinguish  her  from  other  ladies 


354        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

midway  between  seventy  and  eighty.  Her  recent  acci- 
dent had  added  to  her  infirmity,  and  to  the  symptoms 
of  it ;  but,  even  apart  from  the  accident,  she  was  a  con- 
firmed invalid.  She  died  on  19  March  1879,  aged 
little  or  not  at  all  less  than  eighty-one.  Having  this 
personal  experience  of  what  Miss  Clairmont  was  in 
1873,  I  read  with  no  small  astonishment  in  1893  the 
account  which  Mr.  William  Graham,  in  two  articles  in 
The  Nineteenth  Century  named  Chats  with  Jane  Clermont^ 
gave  of  this  very  interesting  lady.  According  to  his 
opening  article,  Mr.  Graham  first  saw  Miss  Clairmont 
(I  adhere  to  her  own  spelling  of  the  surname)  "  one 
spring  day  in  the  early  eighties."  After  it  had  been 
pointed  out  to  the  narrator  that  Miss  Clairmont  did  not 
exist  above-ground  in  the  early  eighties,  he  corrected  his 
date  to  the  "  late  seventies."  As  he  speaks  of  her  as 
being  "  eighty  odd  "  years  old,  one  may  infer  that  the 
right  year  was  1878.  A  lady  who  presented  in  1873  so 
decided  an  aspect  of  old  age  as  I  have  been  speaking  of 
was  not  quite  likely  to  look  much  more  juvenile  in  1878  : 
Father  Time  is  wont  to  order  it  otherwise.  And  yet 
one  finds  in  Mr.  Graham's  articles  such  expressions  as 
the  following  :  "  The  complexion  clear  as  at  eighteen — 
the  slender  willowy  figure  had  remained  unaltered — that 
merry  silvery  laugh  on  which  old  age  seemed  to  have  no 
power — a  blush  covered  the  still  beautiful  tracery  of  the 
skin — there  was  no  sign  of  old  age  about  this  woman  of 
the  poets,  except  the  white  hair — that  wicked  smile 
which  youth  had  passed  on  to  age  undiminished  in 
malice  and  in  mirth,"  etc.  etc.  The  whole  picture  of 
Miss  Clairmont  which  Mr.  Graham  gives  seems  to  me 
delusive.  There  are  besides,  in  his  articles,  very  serious 
and  proveable  misstatements  or  misapprehensions  of 


SOME   FOREIGN   TRIPS,   ETC.          355 

matters  of  fact.  I  will  only  give  one  instance.  He 
imagines  himself  to  have  seen  Miss  Clairmont,  one  of 
whose  Christian  names  was  Jane,  in  possession  of  a  cer- 
tain guitar  which  was  given  by  Shelley  to  a  certain  Jane, 
accompanied  by  a  celebrated  little  poem.  But  this  Jane 
was  not  Miss  Clairmont  at  all.  It  was  Mrs.  Williams 
(afterwards  Mrs.  Hogg)  :  and  the  guitar  remained  in 
London  in  the  possession  either  of  Mrs.  Hogg  or  of  a 
daughter  of  Mrs.  Hogg  (Mrs.  Lonsdale)  at  and  after 
the  date  when  Mr.  Graham  professes  to  have  seen  it 
handled  by  Miss  Clairmont  in  Florence. 

I  now  recur  to  the  four  years,  in  the  interval  between 
1860  and  1873,  when  I  did  not  go  to  Italy  for  my  vaca- 
tion. In  1 86 1  I  took  my  mother  and  Christina  to  Paris 
and  Normandy  :  the  majority  of  the  time  was  spent  in 
Coutances,  and  it  was  the  first  instance  in  which  my 
sister  had  been  abroad  anywhere.  In  1863  I  accom- 
panied Dante  Gabriel  to  Belgium — Brussels,  Antwerp, 
Bruges.  He  had  seen  these  cities  once  before,  in  1849. 
In  1870,  being  the  year  of  the  Franco-German  war,  I 
assumed  that  it  would  be  barely  or  not  at  all  manageable 
to  cross  France  en  route  to  Italy,  so  I  resolved  to  travel 
elsewhere.  At  first  I  thought  of  Portugal  ;  but  this 
project  I  relinquished,  and  went  instead  to  Germany 
through  Belgium.  My  principal  stay  was  in  Munich  : 
I  saw  also  the  Rhine  between  Coblentz  and  Mayence, 
Augsburg,  Wttrzburg,  glorious  old  Nuremberg,  Frank- 
fort, and  some  other  places.  I  was  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Frankfort  on  the  day  when  the  surrender  of  Metz 
was  announced  ;  and  throughout  my  tour  the  news  of 
German  conflicts  and  victories  rang  through  the  land. 
I  saw  some  movements  of  troops  here  and  there,  but 
nothing  conspicuous.  The  general  demeanour  of  the 


356        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

German  people  in  relation  to  the  war  impressed  me  as 
most  highly  creditable.  They  were  of  course  interested, 
and  also  self-confident :  but  I  witnessed  no  vapouring, 
no  noisiness,  no  vindictiveness — nothing  of  what  we 
English  in  these  recent  years  have  had  too  good  cause 
to  term  "  mafficking."  It  may  be  as  well  here  to  ex- 
plain that,  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  I  thought 
Napoleon  III,  and  the  French  nation  under  his  incite- 
ment, entirely  in  the  wrong — not  being  aware  of  certain 
manoeuvres  of  Bismarck  which  obtained  publicity  later 
on  ;  and  I  was  therefore  then  on  the  side  of  the  Ger- 
mans. The  idea  that  the  French  were  reasonably  en- 
titled to  fight  for  the  simple  purpose  of  preventing 
Germany  from  being  powerful  and  united  was  totally 
contrary  to  my  conceptions  of  public  right — and  is  so 
still.  When  Napoleon  had  been  taken  captive,  and  a 
Republic  had  been  proclaimed  in  France,  and  was  con- 
tending against  tremendous  .odds,  my  sympathies  were 
sensibly  modified  :  I  was  anxious  that  the  Germans 
should  bring  the  conflict  to  a  close  on  very  moderate 
terms,  and,  the  less  disposition  they  showed  for  this,  the 
more  were  my  feelings  enlisted  on  the  side  of  France. 
And  thus,  at  the  time  when  I  was  in  Germany,  although 
1  thought  the  Germans  very  fairly  in  the  right,  I  tended 
more  towards  siding  with  the  French.  Besides  I  may 
admit  that  for  the  French,  along  with  the  Italians,  I  have 
always  felt  a  strong  national  predilection,  and  for  the 
Germans  little  to  correspond.  This  may  be  a  prejudice : 
if  so,  it  is  a  prejudice  that  clings  to  me  from  my  early 
years,  when  Italy  was  under  the  heel  of  the  Austrians, 
and  denunciations  of  "g/i  austriaci"  or  cc  /  tedeschi"  came 
thick  and  fast  from  my  father's  lips,  and  pervaded  the 
family  atmosphere  for  all  of  us. 


SOME   FOREIGN   TRIPS,   ETC.         357 

There  is  only  one  other  year  for  me  to  mention  here, 
1872.  That  was  the  year  of  the  great  breakdown  in  my 
brother's  health  and  mental  serenity,  and  I  took  no  holi- 
day worth  speaking  of.  I  found  it  fitting  to  remain  in 
London  during  his  illness  there,  and  afterwards  when  he 
was  in  Scotland  ;  and  I  only  went  out  of  town  to  join 
him  for  a  few  days  in  the  autumn,  after  he  had  recovered, 
and  settled  down  at  Kelmscott  Manor  House  near  Lech- 
lade  and  the  Thames.  George  Hake  was  there  with  my 
brother  ;  also  Mrs.  William  Morris  and  her  two  girlish 
daughters.  Morris  himself  was  visible  for  a  day  or  two. 
My  brother,  in  some  of  his  published  letters,  has  sung 
the  praises  of  Kelmscott ;  I  will  here  merely  say  that  I 
perceived  them  to  be  well  justified.  I  was  there  on  only 
one  other  occasion — in  1874  with  my  wife,  three  or  four 
months  after  our  marriage,  when  we  stayed  a  week  or 
less.  Dante  Gabriel  then  did  the  greatest  part  of  a  head 
of  my  wife  in  tinted  chalks,  pretty  well  known  by  photo- 
graphic reproductions  ;  it  ranks  among  his  very  best 
works  of  that  class. 

A  few  other  places  may  here  be  mentioned,  where  I 
stayed  for  brief  intervals  in  the  period  between  1848  and 
1869.  There  was  Pleasley  Hill  near  Mansfield  (Notting- 
hamshire), the  family  home  of  James  Collinson,  with  his 
mother  and  sister  ;  Gloucester,  for  several  years  the 
residence  of  my  uncle  Henry  Polydore  ;  Frome,  where 
my  father  and  mother  and  Christina  were  settled  in 
1853  ;  Stratford-on-Avon  and  Kenilworth  ;  Boulogne, 
where  I  attended  the  wedding  of  my  friend  Alfred 
Chaworth  Lyster  ;  and  Penkill  Castle,  near  Girvan,  Ayr- 
shire, the  seat  of  Miss  Alice  Boyd,  where  I  spent  an 
enjoyable  fortnight  or  more  in  the  late  summer  of  1867. 
Both  Dante  Gabriel  and  Christina  were  there  at  dates  not 
remote  from  my  visit,  but  not  at  that  same  time. 


XXIII 
EDITING   SHELLEY,  ETC.  ;   TRELAWNY 

TN  March  1868  I  happened  to  reply  in  Notes  and 
Queries  to  an  article  named  Emendations  of  Shelley ; 
and  in  April  I  followed  up  my  reply  by  publishing  in  the 
same  serial  three  independent  papers  on  the  general  sub- 
ject. These  papers  were  founded  upon  certain  pencilled 
notes  which  I  had  made  various  years  before  in  an 
edition  of  Shelley  presented  to  me  by  Bell  Scott ;  for,  on 
receiving  that  edition,  perhaps  in  1860, 1  had  attentively 
read  the  poems  through  again — a  thing  which  I  had  not 
done  since  some  such  date  as  1850.  As  I  have  already 
indicated,  my  first  reading  of  Shelley  was  in  1 844,  and  I 
perused  his  poems  over  and  over  again,  with  extreme 
enthusiasm,  for  some  years  :  after  that  other  matters  inter- 
fered, and  there  was  a  long  gap  during  which  I  read  them 
no  more.  Thus,  on  returning  to  them  towards  1860,  I 
remembered  them  very  well  in  a  broad  sense,  but  was 
prepared  to  view  them  with  new  eyes,  and  thoroughly  to 
recast,  if  needed,  my  notions  concerning  them.  I  found 
them  more  admirable  than  ever. 

The  copyright  in  Shelley's  works  belonged  in  1868  to 
the  firm  of  E.  Moxon,  Son,  and  Co.  The  chief  repre- 
sentative of  this  firm  was  Mr.  J.  Bertrand  Payne,  whom 
I  had  known  slightly  at  the  time  when  Mr.  Swinburne's 
poems  were  published  by  the  Moxons.  As  he  had  been 

358 


EDITING  SHELLEY,  ETC.;  TRELAWNY    359 

concerned  in  withdrawing  from  circulation  the  Poems  and 
Ballads  of  Swinburne,  I  had  not  the  least  wish  to  come 
into  business  or  personal  relations  with  him  or  his  firm. 
Mr.  Payne  however  observed  my  articles  in  Notes  and 
Queries;  and,  being  already  on  the  look-out  for  some  one 
to  control  a  new  and  revised  edition  of  Shelley,  he  wrote 
inviting  me  to  undertake  the  task.  Nothing  could 
possibly  have  been  offered  to  me  more  conformable  to 
my  liking  (for  I  would  gladly  have  undertaken  even  a  far 
inferior  office  connecting  me  in  some  sort  with  Shelley) ; 
and  so  I  promptly  assented,  setting  aside  any  personal 
considerations  which  might  have  influenced  me  in  the 
contrary  direction.  Mr.  Bertrand  Payne  was  a  large 
sleek  man,  not  much  turned  of  thirty-five  in  those  days, 
with  dark  eyes  and  an  extensive  dark  beard  ;  he  passed 
with  most  people  as  being  very  handsome,  and  indeed  he 
was  so  in  an  obvious  though  not  an  elevated  sense. 

Mr.  Payne  assented  to  my  terms — which  were  not 
exorbitant — for  the  editing  of  Shelley's  poems  with  anno- 
tations, and  for  the  writing  of  a  prefatory  memoir.  I  set 
to  work  with  the  utmost  zest — scrutinizing  the  text, 
reading-up  the  biographical  materials,  jotting  down  and 
collating  the  details  in  them,  compiling  my  notes  to  the 
poems,  writing  the  memoir,  and  subsequently  revising 
the  proofs.  This  work  formed  my  chief  occupation  (not 
reckoning  my  official  employ  in  the  Inland  Revenue)  from 
about  the  middle  of  1868  to  the  end  of  1869  ;  the  book, 
in  two  volumes,  was  brought  out  at  the  very  close  of  the 
latter  year.  I  am  satisfied  that  a  person  who  has  not  gone 
through  some  similar  experience  has  no  conception  of  the 
amount  of  trouble  and  painstaking  involved  in  close 
editorial  work  of  this  nature.  The  labour  which  I  under- 
went in  even  so  subordinate  a  point  as  getting  the  printer 


360        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

to  indent  the  lines  of  verse  in  conformity  with  their 
metre  and  rhyming  is  enough  to  raise  a  shudder  in  the 
retrospective  mind — and  even  so  the  result  did  not 
exhibit  all  the  punctilious  accuracy  which  I  had  en- 
deavoured after.  As  to  the  then  existing  materials  for  the 
biography  of  Shelley,  I  found  a  deal  of  confusion  :  if  one 
biographer  gave  some  particular  to  a  certain  purport, 
some  other  biographer  was  sure  to  give  it  otherwise.  I 
picked  my  way  as  best  I  could  amid  these  discrepancies  ; 
and  I  constructed  a  memoir  for  which,  whatever  its  im- 
perfections, I  may  fairly  claim  that  it  brought  the  facts 
more  into  focus  than  its  precursors — avoiding  or  exposing 
an  error  here,  discussing  a  conflict  of  evidence  there,  and 
so  on.  That  I  wrote  in  the  spirit  of  an  ardent  enthusiast 
is  what  I  shall  never  be  ashamed  of :  that  I  none  the  less 
stated  frankly  and  explicitly  any  occurrences  in  the  life 
of  Shelley  which  must  in  equity  be  regarded  as  blemish- 
ing his  character  so  far  is  a  fact  known  to  myself,  and 
patent  to  any  reader  of  the  memoir.  To  be  blameless  is 
not  given  to  man  :  to  be  partly  blameable  and  yet  greatly 
noble  and  lovable  was  given  to  Shelley. 

The  true  functions  of  the  editor  of  a  great  poet  such 
as  Shelley — his  prerogatives  as  limited  by  his  obligations 
— form  a  problem  worthy  of  a  great  amount  of  considera- 
tion, and  subjected  to  much  and  trenchant  difference  of 
opinion.  My  own  conviction  was,  and  still  is,  that  an 
editor  is  entitled,  and  even  required,  to  correct  absolute 
blunders,  provided  always  that  he  plainly  notifies  every 
correction  which  he  thus  makes.  I  also  hold  that,  when 
one  has  to  deal  with  the  full  collected  works  of  a  poet,  it 
is  no  less  than  reasonable  to  give  them  in  a  sequence 
suited  to  their  scale  and  dates,  and  not  simply  to  re- 
produce the  several  volumes  as  they  happened  to  be  pub- 


EDITING   SHELLEY,  ETC.;   TRELAWNY    361 

lished  during  or  after  the  author's  lifetime.  In  all  such 
questions  the  injunction,  "  Hitherto  shalt  thou  come,  but 
no  further,"  is  one  which  resounds  in  the  Editor's  ears : 
the  doubt  is — What  does  the  hitherto  amount  to  ?  Various 
critics  have  opined  that  I  went  too  far  in  the  way  of 
emendation  :  not  indeed  that  they  considered  all  my 
changes  wrong  in  themselves,  but  they  held  that  I  ought 
not  to  have  introduced  them  into  the  text,  accompanied 
though  they  always  were  by  a  precise  annotation  of  the 
fact.  Mr.  Swinburne  was  of  these  ;  also  Mr.  Buxton 
Forman,  who  produced  his  edition  of  Shelley  not  very 
long  after  mine  had  come  out.  He  went  on  the  plan  of 
almost  invariable  adherence  to  the  text  of  the  old  editions 
unless  he  could  find  manuscript  authority  for  revising 
them,  and  he  allowed  of  no  departure  from  the  order  of 
the  poems  as  they  stand  in  Shelley's  successive  volumes. 
Others  thought  that  I  did  not  go  far  enough — among 
them  my  brother  and  Bell  Scott.  I  am  free  to  say  that, 
if  I  had  the  work  to  do  over  again,  I  should  proceed  on 
the  same  principle  as  in  1868-9  5  though  doubtless  some 
particular  changes  here  and  there  would  no  longer  com- 
mend themselves  to  my  mind,  for  the  bias  of  opinion  or 
preference  never  remains  moveless  in  such  matters.  It 
was  with  no  little  satisfaction  that  I  heard  in  1902  from 
a  gentleman  not  then  otherwise  known  to  me,  Mr.  C.  D. 
Locock,  that  he  had  been  making  a  precise  collation  of 
the  printed  forms  of  Shelley's  Prometheus  Unbound  with 
the  original  manuscripts  now  in  the  Bodleian  Library, 
and  that  he  found  some  of  my  conjectural  emendations 
to  be  correct,  as  proved  by  the  manuscripts.  This  gentle- 
man (as  it  happens)  is  a  grandson  of  the  celebrated 
surgeon  Sir  William  Locock,  who  knew  me  at  the  first 
moment  of  my  existence,  for  he  brought  all  my  mother's 

II. F 


3 62        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

children  into  the  world.  Mr.  Locock's  book  on  his 
researches  has  been  published,  and  I  have  read  it  with 
pleasure  and  profit. 

I  need  scarcely  say  that,  at  the  time  when  I  was  revis- 
ing the  text  of  Shelley's  poems  and  writing  the  memoir, 
his  son  Sir  Percy  Florence  Shelley  was  alive,  as  well  as 
Lady  Shelley,  the  wife  of  Sir  Percy.  I  had  not  at  that 
period  seen  either  of  them.  Knowing  on  good  authority 
that  they  did  not — especially  Lady  Shelley,  the  more 
active  spirit  of  the  two — view  with  much  favour  any 
attempts  in  Shelleian  biography  which  went  resolutely  on 
the  line  of  outspokenness,  whatever  might  be  the  sus- 
ceptibilities thereby  ruffled,  I,  who  was  determined  to  be 
outspoken  as  to  the  merits  and  demerits  of  Shelley,  and 
of  his  two  wives  and  everybody  else,  so  far  as  I  could 
arrive  at  the  facts,  felt  that  I  might  get  myself  into  a 
false  position  if  I  were  to  address  the  baronet  or  his 
wife  with  a  view  to  obtaining  documentary  or  other  in- 
formation apposite  to  the  biography.  Had  I  consulted 
them,  1  should  have  lost  my  freedom  of  action  ;  and 
should  have  had  either  to  take  my  cue  from  them  and 
conform  my  memoir  to  their  likings,  or  else  to  "  kick 
against  the  pricks  "  and  assume  an  attitude  not  far  from 
overt  hostility.  I  therefore  did  not  address  them  at  all, 
and  circumspectly  constructed  my  memoir  from  the 
existing  printed  materials,  or  from  any  other  sources 
which  I  found  open  to  me.  As  I  did  not  communicate 
with  Sir  Percy  and  Lady  Shelley  regarding  biographical 
facts,  so  likewise  I  had  to  forego  any  benefit  which  I 
could  have  derived  from  asking  to  be  allowed  to  see  any 
manuscripts  etc.  of  the  poems.  But  in  this  latter 
respect  I  fared  better  than  I  had  reason  to  forecast. 
My  kind  friend  Dr.  Garnett,  who  was  well  acquainted 


EDITING   SHELLEY,  ETC.;   TRELAWNY    363 

with  the  Shelleys,  volunteered  to  request  that  certain 
manuscripts  might  be  placed  in  my  hands  for  inspection 
and  use.  This  application  was  very  promptly  and  liber- 
ally granted.  I  did  not  indeed  receive  the  manuscripts 
of  any  poems  of  leading  importance  (such  as  Julian  and 
Maddalo,  The  Cenci,  Prometheus  Unbound,  etc.),  but  I  had 
in  my  keeping,  and  used  exactly  as  I  thought  fit,  drafts 
of  Charles  the  First,  The  Boat  on  the  Serchio,  and  some 
other  writings.  I  had  therefore  good  grounds  for  feel- 
ing obliged  to  Sir  Percy  and  Lady  Shelley  ;  and  all  the 
more  in  that  they  did  not  treat  the  favour  thus  conferred 
on  me  as  a  handle  for  attempting  to  control  my  freedom 
as  a  biographer.  From  first  to  last  they  never  made  any 
such  attempt,  nor  indeed  did  they  and  I  at  that  time  hold 
any  correspondence  whatever.  The  attempt,  if  made, 
would  not  have  succeeded.  It  would  have  been  none 
the  less  mortifying  and  embarrassing  to  me. 

I  did  at  a  later  date  see  Lady  Shelley  and  Sir  Percy. 
In  1885  my  wife  and  I>  being  at  Bournemouth,  went 
over  to  Boscombe  Manor,  bent  upon  viewing  the  im- 
portant Shelley  relics  which  are  treasured  there.  Lady 
Shelley  appeared,  and  very  politely  showed  us  over  the 
rooms  ;  she  was  an  agreeable-looking,  rather  matronly 
woman,  of  frank  and  unconstrained  address.  My  sight 
of  Sir  Percy  Shelley  occurred  a  little  later,  perhaps  in 
1888.  I  happened  to  be  seated  beside  him  at  a  musical 
soiree  held  by  the  Shelley  Society,  and  was  introduced  to 
him.  The  circumstances  did  not  admit  of  our  holding 
any  conversation  beyond  the  ordinary  greetings.  I 
could  not  discover  in  Sir  Percy  Shelley  the  least  resem- 
blance to  his  father  ;  there  may  possibly  have  been  some 
likeness  to  his  mother,  but  this  was  not  evident  to  me. 
I  infer  that  he  was  rather  of  the  facial  type  of  his  grand- 


364        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

father  Sir  Timothy  Shelley.  He  was  more  than  com- 
monly thin,  with  a  very  ruddy  or  pink  complexion,  and 
noticeably  blue  eyes. 

Whilst  I  was  progressing  with  the  editing  of  Shelley's 
poems,  and  the  writing  of  the  memoir,  I  came  across 
new  information  from  two  or  three  quarters.  The  prin- 
cipal personages  were  Mr.  Henry  J.  Slack  and  Captain 
Trelawny. 

An  acquaintance  of  mine  of  old  date  was  Mr.  John 
Deffett  Francis  :  I  had  met  him  as  far  back  perhaps  as 
1850,  in  the  circle  of  Madox  Brown.  He  was  by  pro- 
fession a  painter,  but  had  never  made  any  particular 
mark  in  the  art,  and  in  my  time  practised  it  little  or  not 
at  all.  Ultimately  he  settled  in  Swansea,  and  became  a 
great  (not  always  a  well-appreciated)  benefactor  of  the 
museum  there.  My  own  knowledge  of  Mr.  Francis, 
prior  to  1868,  was  truly  very  slight;  but  he,  hearing  that 
I  was  engaged  upon  a  memoir  of  Shelley,  took  the  pains 
of  calling  round  on  me  at  Somerset  House,  and  produc- 
ing a  copy  which  he  had  made  of  a  letter  penned  by  the 
poet  in  181 1.  The  letter  was  a  very  important  one.  It 
was  written  to  Miss  Elizabeth  Kitchener  (the  lady  who 
figures  in  Shelleian  biography  under  the  invidious  name 
of  "  the  Brown  Demon ")  ;  and  showed  that  Shelley 
was  then  at  odds  with  his  Oxford  friend  Thomas  Jeffer- 
son Hogg,  on  the  ground  that  the  latter  had  been 
making  love  to  the  first  Mrs.  Shelley  (Harriet  West- 
brook).  Mr.  Francis  informed  me  that  the  original  of 
this  letter,  and  many  others  addressed  by  Shelley  to  the 
same  correspondent,  were  in  the  hands  of  a  legal  gentle- 
man, Mr.  Henry  J.  Slack,  and  he  encouraged  me  to 
write  to  Mr.  Slack,  and  see  whether  I  could  be  allowed 
to  inspect  the  letters.  I  did  so,  and  Mr.  Slack,  who 


EDITING   SHELLEY,  ETC.;   TRELAWNY    365- 

lived  with  his  wife  in  Camden  Town,  permitted  me  to 
call. 

I  had  not  had  any  previous  personal  acquaintance  with 
Mr.  Slack,  but  had,  at  his  invitation,  contributed  a  paper 
to  a  monthly  serial  which  he  edited,  The  Intellectual  Ob- 
server ;    he  took  an  interest  in   scientific  matters,  and 
became  later  on  the    President    of    the    Microscopical 
Society.     He  was  a  short  and  rather  corpulent  man  of 
middle    age  :    in   the  present  instance,  and  in  several 
others  afterwards,  both  he  and  his  wife  treated  me  with 
much  complaisance.     He  showed  me  the  full  bundle  of 
letters  ;  which  I  read  out  aloud — a  performance  occupy- 
ing two  evenings.    He  authorized  me  to  avail  myself  of 
the  correspondence,  by  way  of  informing  my  own  mind 
as  to  the  facts,  and  of  making  some  sparse  use  of  them 
in  my  narrative  ;  but  not  to  the  extent  of  quoting  any 
passages,  or  of  entering  at  large  into  details.    The  reason 
for  this  reserve  was  that  Mr.  Slack,  although  the  custo- 
dian of  the  letters,  was  not  in  an  accurate  sense  their 
owner.     They  had  been  deposited  with  him  as  a  lawyer, 
many  years    previously,  by  a   representative   of   Miss 
Hitchener  ;  and  the  ownership  of  them  had  finally  de- 
volved upon  a  lady  living  in  Germany,  who  was  probably 
quite  unaware  of  their  existence,  and  certainly  not  in 
the  way  of  caring  or  thinking  anything  about  them. 
Mr.  Slack,  who  had  a  right  sense  of  the  literary  interest 
of  the  papers,  had  no  desire  that  attention  should  be 
directed  to  them  so  as  to  induce  any  remote  legal  claim- 
ant to  start  into  activity,  and  call  for  the  return  of  them  : 
he  preferred  the  policy  of  "  letting  sleeping  dogs  lie." 
I  of  course  conformed  to  his  injunctions  ;  and  the  cor- 
respondence, though  of  some  substantial  service  for  the 
purposes  of  my  memoir,  has  not  left  any  overt  trace  in 


3 66        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

its  pages  :  a  few  juvenile  poems  interspersed  in  the 
letters  were  used  in  my  edition,  under  the  sanction  of 
Mr.  Slack.  At  a  later  date  through  my  influence  with 
this  gentleman  the  letters  were  freely  drawn  upon  by 
Professor  Dowden  in  his  Life  of  Shelley  ;  and  they  have 
even  been  printed  in  full  (but  without  my  previous  cog- 
nizance) for  private  circulation.  I  think  that  either  the 
British  Museum  or  else  Mr.  T.  J.  Wise  now  holds  the 
originals,  purchased  from  Mr.  Slack.  Thus  the  infor- 
mation good-naturedly  given  to  me  by  Mr.  DefFett 
Francis  has  proved  in  the  long  run  of  no  small  value  to 
persons  who  are  curious  in  the  byways  of  Shelleian  bio- 
graphy. But  for  that  information,  the  papers  would  to 
all  appearance  have  lain  perdu  in  the  hands  of  Mr.  Slack 
up  to  the  date  of  his  death,  and  would  to  this  day  be 
totally  unknown  to  readers. 

I  now  proceed  to  Edward  John  Trelawny,  the  author 
of  that  fascinating  and  mainly  autobiographical  romance 
The  Adventures  of  a  Younger  Son,  and  of  two  books  about 
Shelley  which  I  have  already  had  occasion  to  name.  I 
happen  to  have  seen  this  gentleman  twice  in  1843, 
when  I  was  a  mere  boy  and  he  was  fifty  years  of  age,  a 
strikingly  handsome  man  ;  for  he  called  in  our  house, 
50  Charlotte  Street,  conveying  an  invitation  to  my 
father,  who  was  then  in  a  very  risky  state  of  health, 
from  Mr.  John  Temple  Leader,  of  Putney,  to  stay  for  a 
few  days  at  his  house,  for  any  benefit  which  might  ac- 
crue from  change  of  air.  I  was  the  only  person  at  home 
at  the  moment,  and  thus  I  had  a  brief  talk  with  Mr. 
Trelawny — whose  forcible  look  and  manner  remain  clear 
in  my  mind  from  that  remote  period.  Mr.  Temple 
Leader,  who  was  a  Radical  Member  of  Parliament  in 
those  days,  was  alive  until  the  winter  which  opened  the 


EDITING   SHELLEY,  ETC.;   TRELAWNY    367 

year  1903,  settled  for  many  years  in  a  villa  near  Florence. 
His  age  was  already  patriarchal  in  1900,  when  I,  while 
staying  for  a  few  weeks  in  Florence,  was  told  that  he 
was  still  wont  to  bathe  every  morning,  summer  and 
winter,  in  a  sheet  of  water  in  his  grounds.  After  this 
small  affair  of  1843  ^  saw  no  more  of  Trelawny  ;  but, 
while  going  on  with  the  Shelley  work,  I  wrote  to  his 
friend  Barone  Kirkup  in  Florence  asking  whether  he 
thought  I  might  address  Trelawny  with  a  view  to  learn- 
ing anything  about  the  poet  which  he  would  be  willing 
to  impart.  Kirkup  paved  the  way  for  me,  and  Trelawny 
consented  that  I  might  call  upon  him  at  his  house, 
7  Pelham  Crescent,  Fulham  Road.  This  I  did  on 
28  June  1869. 

In  1882,  not  long  after  the  death  of  "the  Ancient 
Mariner"  (a  designation  which  I  found  applied  to  him 
by  one  at  least  of  his  intimates)  I  published  in  The 
Athenaeum  some  papers  entitled  Taify  with  Trelawny^  con- 
sisting of  extracts  from  my  diary  wherein  I  recorded 
details  of  my  several  interviews  with  this  very  striking 
personage  from  1869  to  1881.  I  shall  therefore  not 
attempt  here  to  enter  with  any  minuteness  into  the  same 
details  :  but  shall  limit  myself  to  general  impressions  and 
reminiscence.  Trelawny,  born  in  November  1792  (the 
same  year  as  Shelley),  was  in  his  seventy-seventh  year 
when  I  first  saw  him  in  Pelham  Crescent ;  a  man  about 
six  feet  high,  with  broad  chest  and  no  small  residue  of 
herculean  strength,  of  iron  constitution,  and  a  demeanour 
of  indomitable  firmness.  His  voice,  when  he  chose  to 
exert  it,  was  startlingly  powerful ;  but  for  the  most  part 
he  spoke  in  a  mild  and  rather  subdued  tone.  He  could 
recite  poetry  with  great  solemnity  and  effect  :  I  seldom 
heard  him  do  so,  but  can  recollect  a  stanza  or  two  from 


368        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

Byron,  "  Ave  Maria,  'tis  the  hour  of  prayer,"  etc.,  which 
could  not  have  been  given  by  any  one  with  a  truer  senti- 
ment or  a  better  sense  of  rhythm.  The  appearance  of 
Trelawny  in  his  old  age  has  been  effectively  rendered  by 
Millais  in  his  excellent  picture  named  The  North-West 
Passage  ;  effectively,  but  I  consider  too  disadvantageously. 
Millais  has  over-enforced  the  grim  look,  has  hardly  done 
justice  to  the  fineness  of  feature,  and  has  made  the  trunk 
and  limbs  appear  too  huddled  and  cramped.  This  should 
be  apparent  to  any  one  who  might  look  at  a  photograph 
of  Trelawny  taken  much  about  the  same  time.  I  possess 
a  print  of  it,  which  he  presented  to  me.  He  had  very 
clear  blue  eyes,  a  small  but  shapely  and  highly  energetic 
nose  (I  have  heard  it  compared  to  the  beak  of  a  falcon), 
and  a  mouth  which  must  naturally  have  been  beautiful, 
but  which,  owing  to  a  pistol-shot  when  an  attempt  to 
assassinate  him  was  made  during  the  Greek  war  of 
independence,  had  got  somewhat  drawn  aside.  This 
gave  rise  to  what  may  have  passed  for  a  sardonic  or  sour 
expression  of  countenance,  which  (I  take  it)  was  not 
genuinely  his.  He  was  partially  bald,  and,  after  the 
manner  of  a  past  generation,  he  wore  a  scalp,  or  else  a 
cap  :  I  am  not  certain  that  I  ever  saw  him  without  one 
or  the  other. 

In  the  Life  of  Millais  by  his  son  brief  reference  is  made 
to  the  fact  that  Trelawny  was  anything  but  pleased  on 
finding,  after  his  sittings  to  Millais  were  finished,  that  the 
painter  had  placed  at  his  elbow,  in  the  picture,  a  glass  of 
stiff  grog.  He  was  not  far  from  a  teetotaller,  and  was 
a  vigorous  denouncer  of  any  approach  to  indulgence 
in  drink.  I  gather  that,  with  his  old-world  notions,, 
he  even  entertained  some  idea  of  challenging  the  artist 
to  a  duel,  as  having  in  effect  traduced  him  behind  his 


EDITING   SHELLEY,  ETC.;   TRELAWNY    369 

back  :  he  did  not  however  actually  proceed  to  this  ex- 
tremity. 

Trelawny  was  a  man  highly  intolerant  of  affectations, 
small  sentimentalisms,  and  conventions  of  any  sort :  even 
to  say  "good-morning"  and  " good-evening"  was  a  truck- 
ling to  usage  better  avoided  in  his  presence.  He  held 
that  the  character  needed  to  be  braced  and  stoicized  on 
all  sides — by  no  means  to  be  lenified  and  trimmed  down. 
Nevertheless  he  was,  so  far  as  I  ever  saw,  essentially  kind 
in  all  his  personal  relations,  not  to  speak  of  his  generosity 
in  money  matters.  He  had  for  years  past  forsworn 
"  sport,"  in  the  sense  of  killing  or  maiming  animals.  A 
pheasant  which  he  had  once  wounded  had  looked  at  him 
with  a  piteous  eye  that  he  could  not  forget.  A  man  was 
to  him  an  animal,  differing  only  in  detail  from  his  fellow- 
creatures.  I  have  heard  him  maintain  that  a  lion  or  an 
eagle  is  a  finer  animal  than  a  man.  I  hereupon  made 
a  suggestion  as  to  the  human  superiority  of  intellect : 
but  "  Yes,  very  cunning"  was  his  only  response.  As  to 
the  races  of  man,  he  considered  the  Arabian  to  stand 
ahead  of  any  European  stock. 

Like  Shelley,  Trelawny  was  a  proclaimed  atheist  :  he 
had  probably  no  preference  for  any  one  religion  over  any 
other,  regarding  them  all  as  silly  superstitions.  He  was 
also  a  materialist  (which  Shelley  ceased  to  be  after  a  cer- 
tain period)  and  a  resolute  Republican.  In  diet  he  was 
remarkably  abstemious — not  a  vegetarian,  but  tending  in 
that  direction.  Scarcely  touching  alcoholic  liquors,  he 
had  nevertheless  a  decided  liking  for  the  taste  of  wine. 
At  upwards  of  eighty  years  of  age  he  would  stand  upright 
as  he  disposed  in  two  or  three  minutes  of  his  breakfast,, 
consisting  perhaps  of  a  few  fruits  and  a  glass  of  water. 
He  did  not  in  any  season  of  the  year  wear  either  under- 


370        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

clothing  or  overcoat,  and  went  generally  stockingless. 
He  told  me  that,  apart  from  temperance  in  general,  the 
only  rule  of  health  which  he  considered  binding  was  that 
of  going  out  into  the  open  air,  even  if  only  for  a  short 
while,  day  by  day,  and  fair  weather  or  foul. 

It  has  often  been  said  that  Trelawny  was  regardless  of 
truth,  and  that  to  hear  him  affirm  a  thing  was  no  reason 
why  one  should  believe  it.  I  did  not  find  this  allegation 
to  be  warranted.  On  the  contrary,  he  seemed  to  me  to 
have  the  same  broad  and  serious  respect  for  truth  which 
marks  other  honourable  and  rational  men  ;  occasionally 
he  stated  something,  as  a  matter  of  reminiscence,  which 
I  thought  probably  erroneous,  but  only  in  the  way  that 
any  other  man  might  make  a  mistake  when  trusting  to 
memory  without  having  at  the  moment  any  data  for 
checking  it.  A  person  who  recounts  many  anecdotes 
from  a  remote  past  is  certain  to  give  them  a  little  in- 
voluntary— or  it  may  be  even  some  voluntary — colour- 
ing of  his  own  ;  especially  if  he  has  a  romantic 
substratum  to  his  character  and  experiences,  which 
the  Ancient  Mariner  assuredly  had.  If  he  stated  a 
thing  at  all,  he  stated  it  positively  :  another  pitfall  for 
the  unwary  narrator.  I  never  heard  anything  from  him 
which  I  supposed  to  require  a  larger  margin  of  sceptic- 
ism than  this.  Many  months  after  I  had  written  these 
sentences  I  received  from  Mrs.  Call  (Trelawny's  daugh- 
ter) a  letter  saying  inter  alia  that  my  "  singleness  of  mind 
as  to  truth  at  all  costs  "  had  been  "  one  of  the  qualities 
her  father  often  spoke  of  to  her,  about  me,  as  so  valued 
by  him  :  in  fact,  he  said  I  was  the  only  entirely  reliable 
man  about  facts  he  had  ever  met"  (!).  I  ought  to 
apologize  for  reproducing  this  encomium.  I  do  that, 
partly  for  the  very  obvious  reason  that  it  gratifies  me 


EDITING   SHELLEY,  ETC.;   TRELAWNY    371 

hugely,  and  partly  as  illustrating  my  thesis  that  Trelawny 
was  by  no  means  indifferent  to  truthfulness.  Ananias 
would  hardly  have  picked  out  truthfulness  as  the  quality 
he  most  esteemed  in  Peter  or  another. 

Trelawny,  it  is  well  known,  was  pre-eminently  one  of 
those  men  whom  one  must  either  take  on  their  own 
terms  or  not  attempt  to  take  at  all.  He  was  peremptory 
and  dictatorial.  If  one  was  liable  to  be  ruffled  or  dis- 
concerted at  every  outburst  of  spleen,  or  every  strong 
expression  applied  to  oneself  or  others,  one  had  to  leave 
him  alone.  A  thin-skinned  man  would  soon  have  felt 
himself  scarified  by  contact  with  Trelawny.  Fortunately 
for  me  I  was  not  thin-skinned  in  that  sort  of  way,  nor 
perhaps  in  any  way  ;  I  was  never  overburdened  with 
amour  fropre  of  the  touchy  quality,  but  wishful  rather  to 
see  myself  as  others  saw  me,  and  to  estimate  myself  by 
the  same  standard  which  I  applied  to  my  fellows.  On 
all  grounds  I  was  anxious  to  get  the  benefit  of  Trelawny's 
knowledge  of  Shelley,  the  man  and  the  poet,  and  felt 
proud  of  coming  into  relation  with  a  person  so  interest- 
ing in  himself,  so  closely  associated  with  a  Shelley  and 
a  Byron,  and  so  imbued  with  immortal  memories, 

"  Nepenthe,  moly,  amaranth,  fadeless  blooms." 

Besides,  his  years  were  very  advanced,  while  I  was  only  on 
the  confines  of  middle  age.  I  therefore  found  no  diffi- 
culty in  adapting  myself  to  these  conditions,  and  taking 
with  an  easy  temper  and  a  changeless  countenance  any 
little  sallies  to  which  he  occasionally — for  after  all  it  was 
but  seldom — chose  to  subject  me.  Whether  they  came  in 
the  nature  of  a  cold  douche  or  of  a  drop  of  hot  sealing- 
wax,  they  were  equally  innocuous,  and  equally  tolerated. 
I  suspect  he  may  have  made  it  rather  a  system  to  test 


372        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

new-comers  by  a  little  brow-beating,  so  as  to  judge 
whether  he  and  they  could  get  on  together  or  not. 

The  freshness  of  the  veteran's  love  for  Shelley,  upon 
which  the  lapse  of  long  years  seemed  to  have  produced 
no  effect,  was  touching  to  witness  ;  and  there  was  no 
kind  of  stint  in  the  amount  of  information  which  he 
gave  me  about  him — sometimes  in  answer  to  direct  in- 
quiry and  often  also  volunteered.  From  the  earliest 
stage  of  our  intercourse,  he  evidently  discovered  that 
my  feeling  on  the  subject  was  one  of  genuine  enthusiasm. 
No  doubt  this  predisposed  him  in  my  favour  ;  and  very 
soon  he  treated  me  with  an  amount  of  confidence  and 
kindness  exceeding  my  best  expectations.  I  can  truly 
say  that  Trelawny  was  fond  of  me  ;  and  I  question 
whether  in  these  his  closing  years  there  was  any  person 
whom  he  was  better  pleased  to  see,  or  to  whom  he  was 
more  willing  to  open  his  mind  with  full  unreserve.  It 
often  struck  me  as  somewhat  singular  that  a  man  who 
had  lived  a  life  so  unadventurous  as  mine,  and  who  had 
so  little  turn  for  anything  partaking  of  active  physical 
enterprise,  should  secure  the  good-will  of  the  "  Younger 
Son,"  the  hero  of  a  hundred  exploits  of  the  most  dare- 
devil and  the  least  law-abiding  description  ;  so  however 
it  was,  and  possibly  the  very  fact  that  I  stood  on  an  in- 
tirely  different  plane  of  tendency  and  aptitude  from 
himself  conciliated  rather  than  repelled  him.  I  repaid 
Trelawny's  partiality  to  me  in  the  only  available  or  suit- 
able coinage — that  of  having  a  warm  affection  for  him  : 
he  often  bespoke  a  visit  from  me,  and  I  complied  not 
only  because  it  was  obligatory  and  proper  to  do  so,  but 
because  it  afforded  a  lively  satisfaction  to  myself. 

Trelawny's  ordinary  residence  was  in  the  country — 
Sompting  near  Worthing  :  he  was  not  often  in  town 


EDITING   SHELLEY,  ETC.;   TRELAWNY    373 

except  in  the  warm  season,  June  to  September.  I  was 
at  Sompting  three  or  four  times,  but  our  intercourse  was 
mostly  limited  to  the  period  he  spent  in  London.  His 
wife  and  his  daughter  Laetitia  (now  married  to  Colonel 
Call)  were  generally  in  Italy.  The  lady  who  kept  house  for 
him  in  Sompting  and  London  was  Miss  Emma  Taylor, 
currently  termed  his  niece  :  this  however  was  only  a 
phrase  adopted  for  convenience  sake,  as  there  was  no 
blood-relationship.  Everything  in  the  establishment  was 
extremely  well  kept  by  Miss  Taylor  ;  and  Trelawny, 
though  his  habit  of  life  was  simplicity  itself,  had  in  his 
•surroundings  nothing  untidy,  slovenly,  or  of  inferior 
quality.  I  usually  went  round  to  Pelham  Crescent  in 
the  evening,  soon  after  the  close  of  my  office-hours.  My 
host  gave  me  at  once  an  excellent  cup  of  coffee  (a  matter 
.about  which  he  was  rather  particular),  followed  by  cigars 
and  talk,  and,  before  I  left,  by  a  comfortable  tea  or 
supper.  He  was  a  steady  but  not  an  excessive  smoker. 
Spite  of  his  anti-conventional  brusqueriey  Trelawny  was 
essentially  a  courteous,  or  I  would  almost  say  a  polite, 
man  ;  he  had  not  the  least  liking  for  the  hail-fellow-well- 
met  style  of  upstarts  and  whippersnappers  which  he  per- 
ceived to  be  increasingly  prevalent.  He  was  fond  of 
warmth,  and  there  was  often  a  fire  in  his  sitting-room 
even  in  weather  that  could  not  be  called  chilly.  No 
household  dog  or  cat  was  discernible.  Near  the  fire 
in  his  roomy  wooden  chair  sat  Trelawny,  with  an  air 
between  indolence  and  brooding  :  he  did  not  use  a 
cushion,  but  had  two  or  three  newspapers  as  a  sub- 
stitute. He  was  not  exactly  a  copious  talker :  yet 
in  various  instances  I  have  spent  some  four  or  more 
hours  in  his  company  when  the  conversation  flagged 
not  at  all.  He  did  three-quarters  of  it,  my  own  part 


374        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

being  chiefly  that  of  an  inquiring  listener  ;  he  very 
willingly,  however,  attended  to  anything  that  I  had  to 
say.  Occasionally,  but  not  often,  some  other  visitor 
came  in.  In  1869,  or  indeed  till  the  close  of  his  life,  he 
had  none  of  the  infirmities  of  old  age,  unless  it  be  that 
his  hearing  was  rather  less  good  than  it  had  been.  His 
temperament  in  these  years  had  a  certain  tinge  of  melan- 
choly— he  required  to  be  roused  into  anything  like 
sprightliness  or  lively  humour  :  with  the  fall  of  the  leaf 
his  spirits  were  wont  to  sink. 

The  most  noticeable  decoration  in  Trelawny's  sitting- 
room  was  a  brace  of  oil-portraits,  Mrs.  Mary  Wollstone- 
craft  Shelley  and  Miss  Clairmont,  both  at  a  youthful  age. 
These  likenesses  were  painted  by  Miss  Curran,  who  pro- 
duced the  only  portrait  of  Shelley  with  which  the  public 
is  much  acquainted  ;  they  are  not  excellent  works  of  art, 
but  are  nevertheless  very  passably  fair.  They  had  been 
in  Trelawny's  keeping  for  a  number  of  years,  but  in 
strictness  they  belonged  to  Sir  Percy  Shelley,  to  whom 
they  were  consigned  after  their  custodian's  decease. 

One  of  the  visitors  I  recollect  was  Mr.  G.  T.  Lay,  who 
had  been  much  in  China  (partly  as  a  medical  missionary, 
I  believe),  and  who  had  published  some  books  relating 
his  experiences.  Trelawny  regarded  him  with  favour, 
condoning  his  lapsus  in  acting  as  a  missionary  ;  and  on 
one  occasion  he  invited  me  to  meet  Mr.  Lay,  an  agreeable 
unpretentious  man,  at  dinner. 

Almost  as  soon  as  I  knew  him,  Trelawny  placed  at  my 
service,  for  my  edition  of  Shelley,  the  MSS.  of  the 
poems  addressed  by  the  latter  to  Mrs.  Williams  and  her 
husband,  along  with  the  prose-messages  (theretofore 
unknown)  which  had  accompanied  these  poems.  He 
also  readily  sanctioned  my  request  that  he  would  accept 


EDITING   SHELLEY,  ETC.;   TRELAWNY    375 

the  dedication  of  the  edition.  He  lent  me  a  copy  of  that 
very  rare  volume,  Shelley's  OEdipus  Tyrannus,  and  gave 
me  his  own  copy  of  the  privately  printed  Queen  Mab. 
He  also  gave  me  a  strange  and  precious  relic,  a  fragment 
of  Shelley's  charred  skull,  which  he  had  picked  out  of  the 
funeral-furnace.  I  put  it  into  a  very  simple  locket ;  and 
he,  liking  this  arrangement,  got  me  to  bespeak  a  similar 
locket  for  another  fragment  of  the  skull  which  he  re- 
tained. He  further  bestowed  upon  me  the  sofa  which 
Shelley  had  procured  for  himself  in  Pisa,  and  on  which, 
for  he  often  slept  on  it,  the  poet  must  probably  have 
passed  the  very  last  night  of  his  life.  It  is  in  beechwood 
(or,  as  some  say,  in  Italian  walnut-wood) — a  very  roomy 
couch,  of  simple  yet  rather  tasteful  construction.  The 
pedigree  of  the  sofa,  after  Shelley's  sudden  death,  is  as 
follows  :  Mrs.  Shelley,  Leigh  Hunt,  Charles  Armitage 
Brown  (the  friend  of  Keats),  Barone  Kirkup.  The 
Barone,  being  still  older  than  Trelawny,  was,  a  year  or  so 
before  his  decease,  informed  by  the  latter  with  his  usual 
downrightness  that  he  had  better  resign  the  sofa,  lest  it 
should  at  the  last  get  totally  overlooked  as  so  much  anti- 
quated and  unprized  upholstery  of  one  defunct.  Kirkup 
admitted  the  validity  of  the  plea,  and  sent  the  sofa  from 
Leghorn  to  London,  to  be  Trelawny's  property.  Tre- 
lawny however  never  took  possession  of  it ;  he  authorized 
me  to  receive  and  house  it  (the  dimensions  are  such  that 
it  had  to  be  taken  apart  before  passing  through  my 
house-door),  with  the  understanding  that,  after  his  death, 
it  would  become  absolutely  mine.  So  it  did  (as  I  have 
previously  briefly  said),  and  the  Shelley  sofa,  one  of  my 
most  valued  possessions,  faces  me  as  I  write  these  words. 
I  naturally  was  more  than  pleased  to  render  any  small 
service  to  Trelawny  which  lay  in  my  power  during  the 


376        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

twelve  years  of  our  friendship.  After  doing  my  best  to 
stimulate  his  inclination — languid  though  sincere — to 
bring  out  an  enlarged  form  of  his  Recollections  of  the  Last 
Days  of  Shelley  and  Byron,  I  performed  a  deal  of  sub- 
editing work  for  the  book,  and  transacted  all  the  busi- 
ness of  the  republishing.  In  1875  I  acted  on  his  behalf 
in  giving  publicity  to  the  account,  which  he  had  received 
through  his  daughter,  of  the  wilful  running-down  of  the 
boat  in  which  Shelley  perished  :  Trelawny  firmly  believed 
that  this  was  the  true  version  of  the  facts.  In  1878  the 
famous  painter  Gerome  was  projecting  to  paint  a  picture 
(did  he  ever  produce  it  ?)  of  the  burning  of  the  corpse 
of  Shelley  near  Viareggio,  in  the  presence  of  Trelawny 
and  Byron.1  Trelawny,  hearing  of  this,  requested  me 
to  call  upon  Gerome  on  my  next  visit  to  Paris,  and  to 
furnish  him  with  all  the  information  I  could  supply  from 
the  volume  of  Records.  I  made  an  appointment  with 
the  painter,  and  called  in  his  studio.  He  was  then  aged 
about  fifty-four,  with  handsome  features,  an  air  of  dis- 
tinction, and  a  very  grave  earnest  manner.  He  was 
engaged  upon  a  picture  of  the  period  of  the  Bourbon 
restoration,  and  M.  Jacquemart  was  sitting  to  him, 
wearing  an  enormous  and  not  easily  credible  hat  proper 
to  that  epoch.  M.  Gerome  and  I  conversed  together  for 
half  an  hour  or  more,  I  reading  off  into  French  the 
original  narrative  of  the  obsequies,  as  reproduced  in  the 
Records.  Gerome,  I  presume,  did  not  know  much  about 
Shelley's  writings,  nor  about  himself:  the  subject  of  the 
funeral  pyre  interested  him  chiefly  from  the  pictorial 
point  of  view,  as  being  a  very  singular  and  impressive 

1  I  saw  in  London,  late  in  1903,  a  picture  of  this  subject  by  another 
French  artist,  Fournier.  It  is  clever  enough,  but  quite  misrepresents  some 
of  the  seasonal  and  other  conditions  of  the  scene. 


EDITING   SHELLEY,  ETC.;   TRELAWNY    377 

scene,  in  its  association  with  modern  costume  and  sur- 
roundings and  with  the  career  of  two  great  poets. 

Trelawny  had  made  up  his  mind  that  his  body  should 
(like  Shelley's)  be  cremated  ;  and  he  charged  me  to  un- 
dertake the  necessary  arrangements,  to  which  I  assented. 
I  made  some  inquiries  in  London,  but  found  that  in 
this  country  nothing  could  at  that  time  be  done.  The 
alternative  lay  practically  between  Milan  and  Gotha. 

In  March  1871  Trelawny  invited  me  to  dine  at  his 
house  with  Mrs.  Hogg — the  Jane  Williams  to  whom 
Shelley  had  addressed  some  of  the  latest  and  not  least 
graceful  of  his  poems,  and  whom  (as  aforesaid)  I  had 
missed  seeing  at  the  house  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Lewes.  I 
had  the  honour  of  being  seated  by  Mrs.  Hogg  at  the 
dinner  table,  and  I  carried  on  a  brisk  conversation  with 
her.  She  was  then,  I  presume,  well  turned  of  seventy 
years  of  age  ;  but  had  still  an  agreeable  figure  and 
countenance,  upright  carriage,  clear  voice,  and  com- 
plaisant manner.  Her  hair  was  dark — it  was  not  veri- 
tably hers.  She  responded  readily  to  anything  that  I 
said  about  Shelley,  for  whom  she  retained  the  warmest 
regard.  She  confirmed  the  curious  anecdote  told  in 
Trelawny's  Records  about  a  boating  excursion  of  hers 
with  Shelley  when  the  poet  rather  inopportunely  sug- 
gested that  they  should  both  "  solve  the  great  mystery." 
Mrs.  Hogg  was  in  these  years  partially  deaf;  and  I 
could  not  help  suspecting  that  every  now  and  then,  when 
she  replied  in  the  affirmative  or  the  negative  to  some 
question  of  mine,  she  had  not  an  accurate  apprehension 
as  to  what  the  question  was.  Such  is  too  often  the  case 
with  rather  deaf  people  ;  as  I,  who  now  belong  to  that 
class  (but  my  deafness  is  moderate  rather  than  extreme), 
can  testify  from  too  frequent  experience  of  my  own. 
n. — G 


378        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

The  Younger  Son  had  not  at  any  time  entered  into  the 
study  of  literature  in  the  spirit  of  a  student ;  he  took 
however  a  deal  of  pleasure  in  some  works  of  poetry — 
chiefly,  so  far  as  I  observed,  those  of  Shakespear, 
Shelley,  and  Byron.  For  English  poems  of  a  later 
period  he  seemed  to  have  no  real  relish  ;  but  he  made 
an  exception  in  the  case  of  Swinburne,  for  whose  intel- 
lect and  general  attitude  of  thought  he  conceived  a  great 
respect.  Of  Tennyson  he  probably  knew  little.  He 
decidedly  did  not  care  for  his  work,  and  indicated  sur- 
prise when  I  expressed  the  opinion  that  he  was  an 
excellent  poet.  "Well,  it  would  only  be  as  a  minor 
poet,"  he  replied.  Yet  he  was  not  incapable,  even  when 
past  the  age  of  eighty,  of  receiving  a  new  and  vivid 
impression  from  poetic  work.  I  presented  him  with  a 
copy  of  the  edition  of  William  Blake  which  I  had  pro- 
duced in  1874.  Everything  concerning  Blake  was 
entirely  new  to  him,  but  he  took  to  him  with  extra- 
ordinary zest  and  a  singular  freshness  of  mind,  and 
championed  the  merits  of  Mrs.  Blake  in  the  most 
chivalrous  spirit.  After  this  experience  I  thought  that 
he  might  prove  open  to  the  influence  of  Walt  Whitman, 
and  I  gave  him  a  copy  of  the  selection  of  his  poems 
which  I  had  brought  out  in  1868.  Trelawny  however 
was  not  very  strongly  impressed  by  them.  He  said 
that  the  volume  contained  "  the  materials  of  poetry,  but 
not  poetry  itself";  which  is  indeed  a  very  sound  literary 
estimate,  tersely  worded,  though  I  do  not  allow  that  it 
goes  far  enough  in  the  way  of  praise. 

In  1 88 1  I  went  with  my  family  to  spend  the  summer 
vacation  at  Littlehampton.  This  seaside  place  is  not  far 
from  Sompting,  to  which  I  soon  made  my  way.  I  was 
distressed  to  learn  that  Trelawny,  then  not  far  from 


EDITING   SHELLEY,  ETC.;   TRELAWNY     379 

eighty-nine  years  of  age,  had  lately  taken  to  his  bed,  and 
was  in  so  low  and  failing  a  condition  that  he  might 
probably  not  rise  from  it  again.  The  doctor  indeed  said 
that,  if  he  would  only  choose  to  live  on,  he  might  do  so, 
there  being  nothing  constitutionally  wrong  with  him  ; 
but  it  was  pretty  plain  that  no  such  resolute  effort  of 
vitality  would  be  made.  In  fact  I  knew  from  several 
previous  talks  with  him  that  he  had  no  wish  to  linger  on 
into  the  very  dregs  of  existence,  but  on  the  contrary  up- 
held suicide  as  a  sovereign  and  befitting  remedy.  I  ex- 
pressed a  wish  to  be  admitted  into  his  bedroom.  He 
received  the  message  with  kindliness,  but  said — "  What 
would  be  the  use  ?  I  can't  talk."  Thus  things  went  on 
for  some  days,  and  on  the  I3th  of  August  he  expired. 
I  saw  during  the  interval  a  good  deal,  not  only  of  Miss 
Taylor,  but  also  of  Miss  Trelawny,  and  of  her  half- 
brother  Sir  Charles  Goring.  With  the  then  Miss  Tre- 
lawny I  have  always  continued  on  terms  of  genuine 
friendship  :  she  and  her  husband  are  now  settled  in  the 
south  of  France.  On  the  day  of  Trelawny's  death  I  was 
no  longer  at  Littlehampton,  but  in  London,  to  which,  on 
the  close  of  my  private  leave  from  Somerset  House,  I  had 
returned  on  the  8th. 

It  now  became  incumbent  upon  me  to  carry  out  my 
pledge  that  I  would  see  to  the  cremation  of  my  aged 
friend's  remains.  Having  once  returned  to  official  work, 
I  was  entirely  unable  to  break  it  off  again  at  once,  and 
go  abroad  for  the  cremation ;  and,  to  meet  this  condition  of 
things,  it  had  been  arranged,  before  I  left  Littlehampton, 
that,  if  Trelawny  died,  his  body  would  be  embalmed,  and 
then,  after  some  small  lapse  of  time,  I  could  go  down  to 
Sompting,  and  thence  to  Gotha,  and  provide  for  all  that 
was  requisite.  Other  counsels  however  prevailed,  and  no 


380        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

embalming  was  effected.  As  I  was  thus  precluded  from 
acting,  Miss  Taylor  undertook  this  trying  duty,  unevade- 
able  unless  the  positive  injunctions  of  the  deceased  were 
to  be  set  at  naught.  She,  along  with  her  brother,  un- 
flinchingly accompanied  the  coffined  remains  to  Gotha, 
had  the  cremation  performed  there,  and  travelled  with 
the  inurned  ashes  to  Rome,  where  they  were  deposited 
under  a  grave-slab  close  to  that  of  Shelley.  The  space 
had  long  ago  been  purchased  by  Trelawny,  and  marked 
out  for  his  own  entombing. 

I  now  return  to  my  edition  of  Shelley's  poems,  which 
had  furnished  the  occasion  for  my  calling  upon  Trelawny 
in  1869,  and  for  all  my  subsequent  intercourse  with  him. 
The  edition  fared  very  differently  at  the  hands  of  differ- 
ent critics.  Some  were  decidedly  laudatory,  with  little  to 
counteract  their  praise  ;  others  were  balanced  between 
praise  and  blame  ;  some  were  adverse  in  a  high  degree. 
This  was  particularly  the  case  with  The  Athenaum^  where 
(as  I  was  informed,  and  indeed  I  have  reason  to  be  pretty 
sure  of  it)  the  reviewer  was  Mr.  Robert  Buchanan,  who, 
less  than  two  years  afterwards,  made  a  pseudonymous 
attack  on  my  brother's  reputation.  Luckily  for  me,  I 
have  never  been  greatly  sensitive  to  criticism  :  a  fact 
which  may  depend  partly  upon  my  having  myself 
taken  at  so  early  an  age  to  the  work  of  criticizing, 
and  having  thus  realized  to  myself,  in  my  own  person, 
the  truth  that  even  the  most  honest  of  critics  are  simply 
the  mouthpieces  of  their  own  opinions,  which  may  be 
sound,  unsound,  or  a  mixture  of  the  two.  I  have  always 
recognized  that  A.  the  hostile  reviewer  has  as  good  a 
right  to  his  opinion  as  B.  the  eulogistic  reviewer  ;  and 
that,  entertaining  an  opinion,  he  has  the  like  right  to 
express  it.  Man  for  man,  one  is  as  good  as  the  other, 


EDITING   SHELLEY,  ETC.;   TRELAWNY     38 r 

or  rather  may  be  as  good,  and  it  remains  to  be  seen  which 
of  the  two  has  the  more  solid  grounds  for  his  verdict. 
If  I  come  under  the  lash  of  a  critic,  it  behoves  me  to 
consider  whether  he  is  in  the  right  or  not.  If  he  is,  I 
had  better  amend  my  ways  ;  if  he  is  not,  I  need  pay  no 
attention  to  his  censure,  regarded  by  myself,  after  due 
consideration,  as  ill-applied.  But,  in  either  case,  I  have 
no  warrant  to  complain  of  him  if  all  he  has  done  is  to 
express  the  opinion  which  he  veritably  entertains.  If 
per  contra  he  has  dishonestly  or  spitefully  expressed  an 
opinion  not  really  his,  I  have  my  remedy  in  contemning 
him  ;  and  this,  not  because  he  was  abusive  to  me,  but 
because  he  was  untrue  to  himself. 

Mr.  Buxton  Forman,  in  his  monumental  edition  of 
all  Shelley's  works,  poetry  and  prose,  the  publication  of 
which  began  in  1876,  made  several  observations  adverse 
to  the  treatment  which  I  had  adopted.  This  was  fair 
enough,  as  his  point  of  view  differed  considerably  from 
mine  ;  his  edition  is  a  most  excellent  one,  according  to 
its  own  principle.  After  one  or  two  of  his  volumes  had 
appeared,  he  called  on  me  at  Somerset  House.  His  wish 
was  to  come  to  some  arrangement  with  my  publishers 
(then  Messrs.  Ward  and  Lock,  acting  under  the  name  of 
E.  Moxon,  Son,  and  Co.)  whereby  he  would  be  authorized 
to  use  in  his  edition  any  poems,  the  copyright  of  that 
firm,  which  had  been  included  in  my  edition,  while  I 
might  use,  for  any  subsequent  re-issue,  any  new  matter 
in  his  volumes,  founded  upon  inspection  of  original 
MSS.  or  the  like.  This  was  the  first  time  that  I  had 
seen  Mr.  Forman.  Each  of  us  at  once  discerned  that 
the  other  was  animated  by  a  sincere  desire  to  do  his  best, 
according  to  his  own  views,  for  the  text  and  the  renown 
of  Shelley  :  I  readily  suggested  to  Messrs.  Ward  and 


3 82        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

Lock  to  ratify  this  arrangement,  and  so  they  did.  Ever 
since  then  no  two  Shelleyites  could  have  acted  in  greater 
harmony  of  spirit,  if  not  at  all  times  of  detailed  opinion, 
than  Mr.  Forman  and  myself.  I  may  acknowledge  that 
the  balance  of  benefits  conferred  leans  rather  to  his  side ; 
but  what  I  could  do  in  requital  I  always  have  done,  and 
have  done  it  with  pleasure. 

Although  I  think  it  is  well  and  befitting  for  a  man 
that  he  should  not  feel  constantly  irritated  or  aggrieved 
by  adverse  criticism,  I  conceive  that  there  ought  to  be 
some  recognized  medium  enabling  him  to  state  his  side 
of  the  controversy  in  full  and  accurate  detail.  At  present 
no  such  medium  exists  in  this  country — perhaps  not  in 
any  country.  If  an  author  or  his  book  is  assailed  in 
any  publication — let  us  say  The  Quarterly  Review,  The 
Times,  or  The  Saturday  Review — the  impugned  writer 
has  no  adequate  means  of  self-vindication.  He  may  in- 
deed write  to  either  of  these  serials,  confuting  his  an- 
tagonist ;  but  he  cannot  oblige  the  serial  to  insert  his 
remonstrance  at  all,  and,  even  if  this  is  done  in  the  first 
instance,  the  point  is  soon  reached  where  the  editor  says 
"Here  this  discussion  must  terminate";  and  he  says  it 
not  without  fairness,  for  he  has  no  space  for  all  that  the 
writer  would  reasonably  want  to  expound  in  his  proper 
interest.  I  have  long  considered,  and  have  more  than 
once  said  so  to  friends  or  correspondents,  that  there 
ought  to  be  some  periodical  devoted  exclusively  to 
printing  the  observations  which  authors,  artists,  poli- 
ticians, and  other  persons,  may  see  fit  to  make  in  reply 
to  reviews  appearing  in  other  quarters.  Such  a  period- 
ical need  not  be  by  any  means  heavy  reading.  It  could, 
and  surely  would,  contain  communications  from  many 
important  personages  setting  forth  their  own  case  with 


EDITING   SHELLEY,  ETC.;  TRELAWNY    383 

adequate  fulness  ;  and  it  would  of  course  be  open  as 
well  to  the  critics  whose  dicta  were  contested.  A  proper 
discussion  could  then  be  carried  on,  without  favour  or 
affection  to  either  side,  and  many  interesting  points 
would  obtain  valuable  elucidation.  Had  such  a  publica- 
tion existed,  I  should  myself  have  had  frequent  recourse 
to  it :  not  certainly  for  the  purpose  of  traversing  mere 
opinions  in  reviews,  however  unfavourable  to  my  work, 
but  for  the  purpose  of  correcting  distinct  misstatements 
on  points  of  fact — and  I  seldom  read  a  critique  about 
myself,  or  about  matters  of  which  I  possess  intimate 
knowledge,  without  noticing  some  such  misstatement. 
A  publication  of  this  sort  would,  though  inspired  by  a 
different  motive,  stand  on  something  of  the  same  foot- 
ing as  Notes  and  Queries.  It  would  be,  I  apprehend, 
equally  useful,  equally  worth  reading,  and  even,  in  the 
existing  state  of  reviewing  and  journalism,  equally  in- 
dispensable. 

About  the  same  time  when  I  first  met  Mr.  Forman 
the  publishers  of  my  edition  of  Shelley  apprised  me 
that,  as  that  issue  was  nearly  exhausted,  they  proposed 
to  bring  out  a  second  issue  :  this,  as  it  was  finally  set- 
tled, was  in  three  volumes,  instead  of  the  original  two. 
I  again  set  to  work  to  do  my  best  for  the  new  edition, 
and  again  I  found  that  a  great  deal  of  time  and  pains 
were  requisite.  Fresh  facts  had  transpired  :  the  criti- 
cisms applied  to  my  first  edition  had  to  be  taken  into 
account,  and  in  various  instances  (but  only  a  minority) 
I  was  guided  by  them.  In  the  Memoir  prefixed  to  this 
second  edition  there  was  one  point  which  must  have 
looked  rather  unaccountable  to  any  persons  who  may 
have  read  it  after  having  familiarized  themselves  with  the 
original  Memoir.  This  point  related  to  Miss  Clairmont. 


384        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

In  the  original  Memoir  I  had  stated  the  facts  relative  to 
her  connexion  with  Lord  Byron,  and  the  birth  and  brief 
life  of  their  daughter  Allegra.  I  only  stated  facts  already 
printed,  published,  and  perfectly  well  known  to  all 
readers  conversant  with  Byronic  and  Shelleian  matters. 
When  I  saw  Miss  Clairmont  in  Florence  in  1873  (an 
incident  referred  to  in  my  last  preceding  section)  she 
said  nothing  about  this  feature  in  my  Memoir  :  it  is  to 
be  inferred  that  she  had  not  then  read  it.  But,  early  in 
1878,  she  wrote  to  me  in  strong  terms,  saying  that  the 
statements  in  question  had  proved  damaging  to  her,  and 
charging  me  to  miss  them  out  of  any  re-edition.  The 
reprinting  of  my  second  edition  was  then  at  a  very  ad- 
vanced stage  ;  there  was  however  still  time  for  cutting 
out  the  passages  of  which  Miss  Clairmont  complained, 
and  this  I  did.  The  matter  is  very  briefly  referred  to  in 
the  Preface  to  a  re-issue  (1886,  for  the  Shelley  Society) 
of  the  second  Memoir.  The  reader  will  thus  perceive 
that,  in  one  respect  not  unimportant,  the  Memoir  in  my 
second  and  final  edition  of  Shelley  is,  through  no  fault 
of  mine,  a  maimed  recast  of  what  I  had  previously 
written  and  published  ;  in  several  other  respects  it  is  the 
more  advanced  of  the  two.  After  some  years  the  re- 
mainder of  my  three-volume  edition  of  Shelley,  1878, 
was  bought  up  by  Mr.  John  Slark,  a  man  of  business 
closely  connected  with  the  book  trade  ;  and  was  issued 
by  him  with  handsomer  externals  than  before  of  margin, 
binding,  etc.  It  is  now,  I  understand,  in  the  hands  of 
Messrs.  Gibbings  and  Co.,  a  firm  with  which  I  have  not 
come  in  contact. 

Since  my  first  edition  came  out  in  1870  (or  the  very 
end  of  1869)  I  have  had  occasion  to  write  various  other 
minor  things  about  Shelley.  I  may  name — the  short 


DR.    JOHN    WILLIAM    POLIDORI. 

FROM    THE    OIL-PICTURE    BY    GAINSFORO,    j.\    1820, 
NOW    IN    THE    NATIONAL    PORTRAIT    C.ALLERY 


EDITING   SHELLEY,   ETC.;   TRELAWNY    385 

Memoir  in  the  edition  of  this  poet  towards  1870,  form- 
ing a  volume  in  the  series  entitled  Moxon's  Popular  Poets 
(the  same  Memoir  is  reproduced  in  my  volume  named 
Lives  of  Famous  Poets)  ;  an  article  in  The  Fortnightly 
Review  for  January  1871,  named  Shelley  in  1812-13,  an 
Unpublished  Poem,  and  other  Particulars  ;  two  lectures  on 
Shelley's  Life  and  Writings,  first  delivered  in  1875,  anc^ 
published  in  1878  ;  two  articles  in  The  Athen<£um^  1885, 
reviewing  Mr.  Jeaffreson's  book  The  Real  Shelley;  three 
lectures  on  the  Prometheus  Unbound^  forming  part  of  the 
transactions  of  the  Shelley  Society,  1886-7  >  two  ^ater 
lectures  for  the  same  Society,  one  on  Shelley  and 
Leopardi,  and  the  other  on  the  Shelleys  at  the  Lake  of 
Geneva  in  1816,  as  recorded  in  the  Diary,  as  yet  un- 
published, of  my  uncle  Dr.  John  Polidori  ;  the  article 
Shelley  in  The  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  1886  ;  a  fully  an- 
notated edition  of  Adonais^  published  by  the  Clarendon 
Press  in  Oxford  in  1891.  At  one  time,  in  connexion 
with  the  Shelley  Society,  I  thought  it  would  be  of  in- 
terest to  collect  from  Shelley's  writings  the  numerous 
passages  relating  to  the  sea  and  rivers,  and  to  sailing 
and  boating,  etc. — considering  the  great  delight  which 
the  poet  had  taken  in  such  matters,  and  the  end  of  his 
career  by  a  sea  catastrophe.  I  put  a  number  of  passages 
together,  with  a  slight  framework,  and  read  them  at  a 
meeting  of  the  Society.  The  audience  exhibited  more 
tedium  than  satisfaction  at  the  reading,  so  I  proceeded 
no  further.  As  to  my  edition  of  Adonais,  I  may  say 
that,  while  on  the  whole  it  was  rather  favourably 
received,  it  has  been  severely  handled  by  some  critics 
better  versed  than  myself  in  the  literature  of  Greece  and 
Rome.  Professor  Churton  Collins,  a  highly  competent 
scholar  not  unknown  to  me  personally,  was  one  of  my 


386        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

leading  censors.  In  1902  the  Delegates  of  the  Claren- 
don Press  informed  me  that  a  second  edition  of  the 
volume  was  proposed  ;  and  I  myself  suggested  that  it 
would  be  well  to  get  some  scholar  to  revise  it  in  relation 
to  classics.  This  has  been  done,  and  very  well  done,  by 
Mr.  A.  O.  Prickard,  of  New  College,  Oxford.  It  was 
Mr.  Frederick  S.  Ellis  who  induced  the  Delegates  of 
the  Clarendon  Press  to  bring  out  an  annotated  Adonais^ 
and  to  commission  me  for  the  work  :  I  had  assisted 
him,  in  some  very  subordinate  degree,  in  his  praise- 
worthy Lexical  Concordance  to  the  Poetical  Works  of  Shelley r, 
1892.  There  is  also  a  handsome  volume  published  in 
1894,  The  Vale  of  Nantgwilt,  by  Mr.  R.  W.  Tickell. 
Nantgwilt  is  a  Shelleian  locality,  now  much  devas- 
tated for  the  purposes  of  some  waterworks  ;  and  Mr. 
Tickell  asked  me  to  write,  which  I  did,  a  monograph, 
printed  in  this  volume,  upon  Shelley's  connexion  with 
the  site. 

1  had  another  Shelleian  project,  of  no  small  compass, 
carried  to  completion  so  far  as  I  was  personally  con- 
cerned ;  but  I  could  not  find  a  publisher,  and  it  remains 
unknown  save  to  the  fewest.  It  occurred  to  me  that  an 
interesting  thing  would  be  to  collect  into  one  body  all 
the  accessible  letters  of  Shelley,  intermixed,  in  right 
chronological  order,  with  all  the  passages  in  his  poetry 
and  prose  which  relate  distinctly  to  himself.  These 
writings,  thus  ordered  and  efficiently  annotated,  would 
in  effect  form  a  quasi-autobiography.  The  same  plan 
might  be  applied,  with  very  good  results,  to  all  sorts  of 
authors,  if  only  they  were  of  enough  importance  to 
deserve  such  painstaking  and  detailed  presentment. 
Most  of  them  have  written  a  good  deal  about  them- 
selves ;  but  in  a  scattered  form  which,  if  it  is  to  be 


EDITING   SHELLEY,   ETC.;   TRELAWNY    387 

made  to  serve  a  clearly  autobiographical  purpose,  must 
be  searched  out  and  pieced  together.  I  began  this  work 
with  Shelley  late  in  1872,  and  finished  it  towards  the 
middle  of  1879.  Mr.  Slack  authorized  me  to  insert 
the  whole  of  the  Kitchener  correspondence.  I  named 
the  compilation  Cor  Cordium,  and  Dr.  Garnett  ac- 
cepted the  dedication  of  it.  I  tried  my  chance  with 
various  publishers,  both  English  and  American  ;  in 
more  than  one  instance  I  seemed  on  the  point  of  suc- 
ceeding, but  finally  I  failed.  Two  counter-considerations 
weighed  with  the  publishers  :  (i)  That  they  had  serious 
doubts  whether  the  book  would  be  a  paying  venture  ; 
and  (2)  that  a  portion  of  the  materials  was  subject  to 
copyright  difficulties,  which,  although  they  might  very 
probably  have  been  surmounted  upon  due  application, 
were  yet  such  as  to  damp  the  ardour  of  a  speculator. 
My  compilation  might  be  regarded  as  a  very  complete 
one  at  the  period  when  it  was  worked  out :  since  then 
other  Shelley  letters  etc.  have  been  published,  especially 
in  Professor  Dowden's  Life  of  Shelley,  1886,  and  the 
compilation,  if  printed  at  all,  would  have  to  be  substan- 
tially extended,  or  else  would  be  behind  the  time.  With 
Professor  Dowden  I  have  had  a  good  deal  of  corres- 
pondence now  and  again,  and  some  little  personal  talk, 
always  agreeable. 

In  the  course  of  my  lengthy  and  diversified  Shelley 
work  I  came  in  contact  with  some  few  persons  whom  I 
have  not  yet  mentioned.  One  was  Mr.  Frederick 
Locker-Lampson,  who  possessed  some  manuscripts, 
early  editions,  etc.,  and  whom  I  found  most  liberal 
and  courteous  in  all  matters  wherein  he  could  promote 
my  undertaking.  Our  amicable  intercourse  continued 
up  to  the  date  when  he  quitted  London  to  settle  down 


3 88        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

in  his  country-house  in  Sussex.  Another  was  Mr.  Denis- 
Florence  MacCarthy,  who  brought  out  his  book,  Shelley  s 
Early  Life,  in  the  interval  between  the  first  and  the 
second  issue  of  my  edition  of  the  poems.  This  book 
relates  (as  many  readers  will  remember)  chiefly  to  the 
sojourns  of  Shelley  in  Dublin.  Mr.  MacCarthy  was 
rather  markedly  Irish  in  manner  and  demeanour,  with 
the  ready  and  open  pleasantry  of  an  Irishman.  There 
was  also  Miss  Mathilde  Blind  the  poetess.  I  first  met 
her  in  July  1869,  in  the  house  of  Madox  Brown  ;  soon 
afterwards  I  saw  her  in  her  own  home,  and  later  on  I 
was  continually  in  her  company,  in  the  society  of  my 
wife  or  of  the  Browns,  up  to  the  close  of  1892  ;  after 
that,  only  occasionally.  She  died  in  1896.  There  were, 
in  fact,  several  years  during  which  Miss  Blind  was  prac- 
tically an  inmate  of  the  house  of  Brown  and  his  wife, 
with  occasional  intervals  when  she  tried  some  other  resi- 
dence, in  a  vain  quest  for  the  bettering  of  her  health. 
Miss  Blind  was  a  most  enthusiastic  Shelleyite,  as  shown 
in  various  writings  of  hers.  She  saw  something  of 
Trelawny  through  my  introduction.  She  was  of  Jewish 
race,  with  a  fine,  animated,  speaking  countenance,  and 
an  ample  stock  of  interesting  and  pointed  conversation. 
Her  voice  was  peculiar,  with  a  rather  rumbling  tone,, 
and  her  person  petite.  Although  born  in  Germany,  she 
had  been  domiciled  in  London  from  a  very  early  period 
of  childhood,  and  one  might  have  expected  her  to  speak 
English  like  a  native  ;  yet  this  was  not  the  case,  and  her 
accent  continued  noticeably  Teutonic  up  to  the  close  of 
her  life.  Another  lady  who  has  given  practical  proof 
of  her  interest  in  Shelley  is  Mrs.  Rose  Mary  Crawshay, 
well  known  as  having  started  the  system  of  "Lady 
Helps."  She  has  founded  annual  prizes  for  essays, 


EDITING   SHELLEY,   ETC.;   TRELAWNY    389 

coming  from  female  hands,  on  Byron,  Shelley,  and 
Keats  ;  and  she  asked  me  to  be  one  of  the  three  trus- 
tees for  this  fund.  I  assented,  but  have  not  anything  to 
do  with  the  actual  assignment  of  the  prizes.  Mrs. 
Crawshay  has  always  shown  abundant  good  will  to  me 
and  mine. 

In  1886  the  Shelley  Society  was  founded  on  the  in- 
itiative of  Dr.  Furnivall,  with  whom  I  had  had  much  liter- 
ary and  some  personal  intercourse  for  perhaps  thirty  years 
preceding.  This  intercourse  began  with  the  affair,  pre- 
viously mentioned,  of  the  dictionary  work  for  the  Philo- 
logical Society  :  indeed  I  had  seen  Dr.  Furnivall  even 
earlier  than  that,  but  without  definitely  making  his  ac- 
quaintance. This  gentleman,  a  most  robust  veteran,  is 
tolerably  well  understood  to  be  a  rather  tough  customer 
for  people  with  whom  he  comes  into  collision  :  more 
(I  apprehend),  in  some  instances,  from  liking  to  have  "a 
bit  of  fun  "  over  some  literary  problem  than  from  any- 
thing savouring  of  spite  ;  but  the  "  bit  of  fun  "  is  too 
apt  to  degenerate  into  "  a  bit  of  a  scrimmage."  He 
possesses  in  an  eminent  degree  one  of  the  most  amiable 
and  distinctive  qualities  of  a  genuine  man  of  letters — 
that  of  being  perfectly  willing  and  glad  to  put  his  stores 
of  knowledge  at  the  service  of  any  one  who  has  re- 
course to  them  in  a  becoming  spirit.  He  has  been  an 
indefatigable  and  inspiriting  worker  in  the  cause  of  our 
earlier  literature  ;  and  (as  we  all  know)  has  been  the 
founder  or  leader  of  various  literary  societies — the  New 
Shakspere  Society,  Chaucer  Society,  Early  English  Text 
Society,  Browning  Society,  and  in  1886  the  Shelley 
Society.  I  myself  always  got  on  extremely  well  with 
Dr.  Furnivall  ;  I  found  him  a  single-minded,  if  some- 
what singular-minded,  scholar,  not  in  the  least  inclined 


390        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

to  belittle  any  work,  good  or  tolerable,  in  which  I  was 
associated  with  him. 

Having  conceived  the  notion  of  this  last-named  body, 
Dr.  Furnivall,  with  characteristic  impetus,  set  to  work 
to  realize  it.  He  applied  to  myself  and  others  to  join. 
I,  though  unaccustomed  to  throwing  in  my  lot  in  com- 
bination with  others  in  any  such  matter,  at  once  agreed. 
We  had  to  do  without  some  of  the  men  whose  co- 
operation would  have  been  most  desirable — Mr.  Swin- 
burne, Dr.  Garnett,  Professor  Dowden  :  they  had 
different  ideas  as  to  the  way  in  which  they  could  best 
honour  the  memory  of  Shelley.  We  started  none  the 
less  with  a  very  fair  list  of  subscribers,  which  soon 
increased.  I  was  appointed  Chairman  of  Committee  :  a 
position  which  I  tried  more  than  once  to  transfer  to 
some  distinguished  colleague  on  the  Committee,  more 
especially  Mr.  Buxton  Forman,  but  I  was  always  urged 
to  remain,  in  the  interests  of  conciliation  and  harmonious 
working,  and  therefore  I  did  so  until  the  Society  dis- 
solved in  1895.  This  was  not  exactly  a  premature 
dissolution,  for  at  starting  the  Society  had  only  pro- 
jected to  last  for  ten  years  ;  it  might  however,  according 
to  the  original  forecast,  have  prolonged  itself  to  some 
later  date.  Another  very  suitable  chairman  of  committee 
would  have  been  Dr.  John  Todhunter,  an  expert  in 
poetic  composition,  and  a  fine  Shelleian  scholar. 

At  first  things  proceeded  with  the  Shelley  Society  well 
for  the  present  and  promisingly  for  the  future;  but 
before  the  end  of  the  year  1886  there  was  a  serious 
hitch,  owing  to  the  setting  to  music  of  the  choruses  in 
Shelley's  drama  of  Hellas,  and  the  performance  of  the 
work  in  St.  James's  Hall.  Dr.  Sell£,  who  was  the 
father-in-law  of  Mr.  Forman,  was  the  musical  com- 


EDITING   SHELLEY,   ETC.;   TRELAWNY    391 

poser.  To  myself  his  music  appeared  spirited,  appro- 
priate, and  telling  :  but  persons  more  critical  in  the 
art  than  I  am  formed  a  different  opinion,  and  considered 
the  performance  in  St.  James's  Hall  to  be  a  manifest 
failure,  and  indeed  a  fiasco.  Moreover  a  member  of  the 
Committee  to  whom  the  arrangements  had  been  entrusted, 
with  strict  injunctions  not  to  exceed  a  certain  limit  of 
cost,  neglected  this  precaution,  and  let  us  in  for  an  ex- 
penditure which  we  neither  intended  nor  were  qualified 
to  meet.  Soon  another  drain  upon  our  resources  was 
detected.  The  Sub-Committee  for  publishing  purposes 
(I  did  not  belong  to  it)  issued,  in  the  first  year  or  two  of 
the  Society,  an  amount  of  Shelley  literature  more  than 
equivalent  to  the  annual  subscriptions  of  a  guinea  each  ; 
and  we  soon  found  ourselves  burdened  with  a  heavy 
debt  to  the  printer.  The  issue  of  books  was  then  re- 
stricted, with  the  natural  result  that  the  subscriptions 
fell  off.  The  Society  became  wofully  impecunious.  The 
members  of  the  Committee,  those  who  had  been  in 
office  at  the  dates  when  the  respective  publications  were 
ordered,  were  held  to  be  responsible  for  the  debt.  Some 
of  them  were  well  known  to  possess  no  spare  cash  ;  so 
the  others,  half  a  dozen  or  so  including  myself,  under- 
took, much  against  the  grain,  to  meet  the  entire  liability 
by  paying  annual  instalments.  I  don't  know  with  pre- 
cision how  much  I  paid  :  I  suppose  more  than  ^"120, 
(  apart  from  my  yearly  subscriptions.  Our  meetings 
dwindled  to  a  mere  figure-head  ;  and  I  was  heartily  glad 
when  at  last  the  main  debt  was  paid  off — an  event  with 
which  the  winding-up  of  the  Society  was  practically  con- 
temporaneous. Some  lingering  liabilities  still  remained, 
and  were  only  settled  in  November  1902. 

There  was  also  another  very  untoward  transaction, 


392        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

which  contributed  to  hasten  our  finale.  In  1892,  the 
centenary  of  Shelley's  birth,  we  were  anxious  to  make 
some  extra  effort  to  celebrate  the  occurrence.  A  sub- 
committee was  appointed  to  provide  for  a  second  perfor- 
mance of  The  Cenci ;  there  had  been  a  first  and  decidedly 
successful  performance  of  this  tragedy  in  1886.  My 
name,  I  am  glad  to  say,  did  not  figure  on  the  sub-com- 
mittee, nor  was  I  at  all  cognizant  of  the  details  of  its 
proceedings.  The  Society  gave  a  distinct  pledge  that 
any  moneys  contributed  for  the  express  purpose  of 
carrying  out  the  performance  would  be  reserved  for  that 
object,  and  not  used  as  forming  part  of  the  ordinary 
funds.  Some  contributions  came  in  accordingly.  Great 
difficulties  ensued  in  obtaining  a  theatre  or  a  company 
for  the  performance,  and  the  project  was  all  but  aban- 
doned. At  last,  however,  these  obstacles  were  sur- 
mounted ;  the  theatre  was  there,  and  the  company  could 
have  been  got  together.  But  then  came  the  dismal 
announcement  that  the  contributions  had  vanished  : 
they,  when  the  scheme  seemed  to  have  collapsed,  had  not 
been  finally  kept  apart,  but  had  been  used  for  the  general 
purposes  of  the  Society — mainly  for  paying  off  the  debt 
to  the  printer.  I  knew  nothing  about  this  matter  until 
it  was  all  over  :  I  then  heard  the  details  from  a  member 
•of  the  sub-committee,  a  most  honourable  man,  who  has 
taken  an  active  part  in  writing  about  Shelley.  I  will 
not  enter  into  details  as  to  the  responsibility  for  this 
course  of  action.  No  doubt  there  must  have  been  some 
grumbling  and  some  protests  :  these  did  not  come  to  my 
direct  knowledge. 

The  first  secretary  of  the  Shelley  Society  was  Mr. 
Sydney  E.  Preston,  a  young  lawyer  enlisted  by  Dr.  Fur- 
nivall  ;  he  did  the  work  in  a  spirited  style,  but  his  own 


EDITING   SHELLEY,   ETC.;   TRELAWNY    393 

occupations  obliged  him  to  resign  soon.  Then  there 
was  Mr.  J.  Stanley  Little,  also  young,  but  not  juvenile. 
He  was  a  man  with  many  irons  in  the  fire.  He  handled 
the  Shelley  iron  (as  I  thought)  with  all  the  persistency 
and  deftness  that  could  have  been  expected  ;  but  he 
also  remained  not  very  long.  The  last  secretary  was 
Mr.  Thomas  J.  Wise,  the  accomplished  bibliographer, 
who  had  acted  in  a  similar  capacity  for  the  Browning 
Society.  He  went  on  till  the  end  ;  and  those  who  are 
acquainted  with  him  will  need  no  assurance  from  me 
that  he  displayed  an  ample  sufficiency  of  nous.  During 
his  secretaryship  an  interesting  Shelley  collection  was 
got  up  and  publicly  exhibited  in  the  Guildhall — books, 
manuscripts,  and  some  other  relics.  Mr.  Wise  became 
the  happy  owner  of  the  only  three  known  copies  of  the 
original  edition  of  Poems  by  Victor  and  Cazire  (mainly 
Shelley's  boyish  work),  than  which  it  would  be  difficult 
to  produce  a  more  monumental  sample  of  vapid  rubbish. 
The  second  copy,  secured  in  1903,  cost  £600  ! 

My  experience  of  associations — of  bodies  in  which 
the  members  are  expected  to  act  consentaneously,  each 
of  them  reinforcing  all  the  others — has  not  been  felici- 
tous. I  have  little  natural  disposition  to  enter  any  such 
body  ;  and  perhaps  little  aptitude — apart  from  an  equable 
temper  and  no  readiness  to  take  offence — for  furthering 
its  interests.  I  have  not  often  joined  an  association,  but 
circumstances  have  led  me  to  do  so  in  a  few  cases. 
There  were  two  or  three  which  I  need  not  here  take 
into  account.  The  Praeraphaelite  Brotherhood  was 
most  harmonious  so  long  as  it  held  together,  which  was 
not  long  ;  and  at  the  present  day  no  one  can  contend 
that  it  was  not  influential.  The  Committee-men  for 
the  Seddon  subscription  dovetailed  neatly  together,  and 

II. H 


394        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

attained  their  object.  Other  ventures  in  which  I  was 
concerned  jointly  with  colleagues  did  not  fare  well — or 
I  did  not  fare  well  in  them.  The  American  exhibition 
of  British  Art  was  not  a  success — rather  the  reverse  ;  so 
also  the  Hogarth  Club.  From  the  Burlington  Fine 
Arts  Club  I  resigned  after  a  brief  membership.  The 
Shelley  Society  soon  showed  some  ominous  cracks,  and 
it  entailed  upon  me  (and  a  few  other  leading  members) 
very  serious  expense,  with  all  the  vexations  thereto 
incidental.  Since  it  came  to  an  end  I  have  felt  very 
little  inclination  to  be  a  committee-man,  a  member,  or 
what  not,  in  any  association  for  any  purpose  whatever. 
Perhaps  some  readers  will  conjecture  that  the  milkmaid's 
retort  may  have  been  apposite  to  my  case — "Nobody 
asked  you,  sir,  she  said."  But  the  surmise  would  be  a 
little  hazardous. 

In  July  1887,  not  long  after  the  musical  evening  at  the 
Shelley  Society  already  mentioned,  my  wife,  with  the  aid 
of  a  professional  friend  of  hers  Miss  Mary  Carmichael, 
got  up  at  our  house,  5  Endsleigh  Gardens,  another 
Shelleian  musical  soiree.  Sir  Hubert  Parry  favoured 
us  by  attending,  with  a  small  band,  and  his  fine  Scenes 
from  Prometheus  Unbound  were  (among  other  pieces) 
performed,  greatly  to  the  gratification  of  the  audience. 

Having  spoken  of  three  Shelley  relics,  of  excep- 
tional interest,  received  by  me  from  Trelawny,  I  will  add 
a  few  details  about  two  drawings  in  my  possession. 
One  of  them  is  done  by  Shelley  himself,  and  is  signed 
"  P.  B.  Shelley/'  It  was  executed  while  the  future  poet 
was  a  lad  at  Eton,  and  is  not  only  the  most  important, 
but  about  the  best,  of  the  slight  drawings  which  I  have 
seen  from  his  hand  :  possibly  the  local  drawing-master 
was  partly  concerned  in  it.  The  subject  is  Herne's  Oak  in 


EDITING   SHELLEY,   ETC.;   TRELAWNY    395 

Windsor  Forest  :  this  name  is  inscribed  at  the  back.  The 
drawing  is  in  Indian  ink  with  some  very  faint  tinting. 
It  is  somewhat  elegant  in  feeling  and  handling,  and  is 
quite  good  enough  to  be  the  production  of  a  youthful 
amateur  promising  rather  than  otherwise.  At  the  back 
of  the  paper  is  another  sketch,  also  (one  may  suppose) 
Shelley's.  It  is  washed  in  with  very  broad  liquid 
touches  of  Indian  ink,  and  is  inscribed,  with  the  same 
brush,  "  Mr.  Roberts  with  the  fishing-stool  on  his  head." 
One  sees  the  back  of  Mr.  Roberts,  a  rather  "podgy" 
middle-aged  figure,  fishing-stool  in  situ.  I  have  only 
lately  learned  (from  Mr.  Arthur  C.  Benson,  then  of  Eton 
College,  a  recent  and  valued  acquaintance)  who  this  per- 
sonage was — Mr.  William  Roberts,  son  of  a  Provost  of 
Eton.  This  sheet  of  drawings  came  to  me  in  a  singu- 
lar manner.  Mr.  Charles  Lamb,  a  solicitor  of  Brighton, 
a  gentleman  of  whom  I  knew  nothing  whatever,  was  in 
London  in  1882,  at  a  private  hotel  in  Fitzroy  Square  ; 
he  had  come  up  to  have  a  surgical  operation  performed 
on  his  head,  to  remove  some  morbid  growth.  He  wrote 
to  me,  saying  that,  if  I  would  call,  he  would  show  me 
something  in  which  I  might  be  interested.  I  went,  and 
he  produced  the  designs  in  question ;  and  to  my  astonish- 
ment he  offered  to  make  me  a  free  gift  of  them.  He 
informed  me  that,  some  years  previously,  he  had  seen 
these  drawings  in  a  shop  at  Horsham  (near  Shelley's  pater- 
nal home),  and  had  bought  them  at  some  trifling  price ; 
and  he  had  afterwards  shown  them  to  one  or  more  of 
Shelley's  sisters,  who  had  no  hesitation  in  confirming 
their  Shelleian  authorship.  In  accepting  this  liberal  and 
very  unexpected  present,  I  inquired  of  Mr.  Lamb 
whether  I  could  not  offer  him  anything  in  return  :  he 
replied  that  he  would  willingly  receive  any  slight  draw- 


396        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

ing  by  my  brother,  then  recently  deceased.  I  had 
several  such  examples  in  my  hands  at  the  time,  and  was 
glad  to  select  one  for  the  purpose. 

The  second  Shelleian  drawing  in  my  possession  is  an 
Indian-ink  sketch  by  David  Scott  the  distinguished 
painter  :  it  was  given  to  me  by  his  brother,  William 
Bell  Scott.  It  represents  the  Protestant  Cemetery  in 
Rome  ;  chiefly  the  old  burial-space  with  the  graves  of 
Keats  and  the  anatomist  Bell,  but  the  new  burial-space 
is  also  visible,  where  Shelley  lies  :  the  number  of 
cypresses  round  his  tomb  appears  to  be  five.  The  full 
number  planted  by  Trelawny  in  the  autumn  of  1822 
was  eight.  This  drawing  was  made  on  the  spot  in 
1832,  and  I  should  rather  question  whether  any  earlier 
view  of  Shelley's  resting-place  had  been  taken. 

Talking  of  Shelley's  tomb,  I  may  close  with  an 
anecdote  :  it  was  recounted  to  me  in  Rome  in  1902. 
Although  Trelawny,  the  owner  of  the  grave-plot  of 
Shelley  and  of  himself,  was  highly  averse  from  any 
tampering  with  the  integrity  of  the  inscribed  slab  as  it 
was  laid  down  in  1822,  and  his  successor,  Mrs.  Call, 
wholly  shares  in  the  same  view,  the  zeal  of  English  and 
American  local  Shelleyites  was  not  always  according  to 
discretion  ;  and  some  years  ago  they  determined,  be  it 
legal  or  not,  that  a  bronze  wreath  must  and  should  be 
fixed  upon  the  slab.  This  was  done :  most  unfittingly,  as 
I  consider,  for  I  strongly  sympathize  with  the  opinion  and 
the  resolve  of  Mrs.  Call  and  her  father.  One  morning 
the  bronze  wreath  was  found  to  be  gone  :  it  had  been 
wrenched  off  the  grave-slab,  and  thrown  to  the  other 
side  of  the  cemetery  wall.  There  were  many  outcries 
of  "  desecration  "  etc.  ;  but  the  deed  was  done,  its  per- 
formers remained  unknown,  and  the  wreath  has  never 


EDITING    SHELLEY,   ETC.;   TRELAWNY    397 

been  replaced.  In  1902  I  learned  from  the  mouth  of 
one  of  the  offenders  (there  were  two  acting  conjointly) 
who  were  the  persons  that  had  performed  this  service — 
surely  not  any  more  irregular  than  the  act  of  those  who 
had  subscribed  for  the  wreath,  and  fixed  it  upon  the 
property  of  some  one  else.  I  do  not  give  his  name  : 
he  is  an  Italian,  a  devotee  of  English  literature,  and  a 
critical  writer  of  superior  repute  in  the  fields  of  fine  art 
and  archaeology.  He  and  his  colleague  (an  Italian 
Shelleyite  of  special  mark)  had  gone  to  the  cemetery 
after  nightfall,  and  had  detached  and  discarded  the 
well-meaning,  ponderous,  and  superfluous  interloper. 
But  fad  and  fuss  take  a  deal  of  killing.  In  a  news- 
paper of  September  1 903  I  see  it  stated  that  u  a  move- 
ment is  on  foot  in  Rome  for  the  erection  of  a  massive 
bronze  bust  over  the  grave ;  a  replica  of  a  marble 
masterpiece  of  a  well-known  and  now  aged  sculptress  of 
Edinburgh."  I  infer  that  Mrs.  Hill  is  meant.  The 
propensity  for  "  flocking  together  "  is  common  to  birds 
of  a  feather  and  to  old  women. 


XXIV 

OTHER   EDITORIAL   WORK: 
WHITMAN,   LIVES   OF  POETS,   ETC. 

'  I  VHE  range  of  years  when  1  was  greatly  occupied 
with  the  editing  of  Shelley  happens  to  have  found 
me  busy  with  a  good  deal  of  other  work  more  or  less 
in  the  nature  of  editorship.  Dr.  Furnivall  bespoke  my 
services  for  one  of  the  publications  of  the  Early  English 
Text  Society,  viz.  the  Political,  Religious,  and  Love  Poems, 
from  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury's  Lambeth  MS.,  No.  306, 
and  other  Sources,  printed  in  1866.  One  of  the  items  in 
this  series  (it  appears  to  be  a  script  of  the  reign  of 
Edward  IV)  is  a  tolerably  long  composition  named  The 
Stacyons  of  Rome — being  a  list  of  the  indulgences  to  be 
gained,  and  relics  to  be  visited,  in  various  Roman 
churches.  I  was  asked  to  do  what  I  could  towards 
explaining  and  illustrating  the  statements  in  this  curious 
record  ;  and,  though  conscious  of  knowing  extremely 
little  about  such  subjects,  I  assented.  Luckily  I  found 
among  my  mother's  books  one,  by  Girolamo  Francino, 
1 600,  which  came  in  very  pat,  giving  numerous  details  on 
this  express  theme.  So  I  got  through  my  task  a  trifle 
better  than  I  had  expected.  In  1869  came  another  pub- 
lication of  this  Society,  Queene  Elizabethes  Achademy,  by 
Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,  a  Booke  of  Precedence,  etc.  To  this 
was  annexed  a  second  part,  named  Accounts  of  Early 

398 


OTHER   EDITORIAL   WORK  399 

Italian,  German,  and  French  Books,  on  Courtesy,  Manners, 
and  Cookery.  Dr.  Furnivall  asked  me  to  translate  an 
extremely  old  verse-treatise  by  Fra  Bonvicino  da  Riva, 
dating  towards  1290,  De  le  Zinquanta  Cortexie  da  Tavola. 
This  I  did  ;  and  my  performance  gradually  developed 
into  an  Essay  of  seventy-six  pages,  entitled  Italian 
Courtesy-books :  Fra  Bonvicino  da  Rivas  Fifty  Courtesies  for 
the  Table  (Italian  and  English),  with  other  Translations  and 
Elucidations.  I  found  entertainment  in  the  work  :  and 
hope  I  may  have  succeeded  in  imparting  some  of  it  to 
the  readers  of  my  essay,  which  I  dedicated  to  Barone 
Kirkup. 

There  was  another  work,  somewhat  de  longue  haleine, 
which  I  undertook  for  Dr.  Furnivall  and  the  Chaucer 
Society.  It  began  in  1868  ;  but,  getting  much  inter- 
rupted by  my  labours  on  Shelley  and  other  poets,  was 
not  completed  till  some  such  date  as  1872.  It  appeared 
in  published  form  in  1875  anc*  1883 — Chaucer's  Troylus 
and  Cryseyde,  compared  with  Boccaccio's  Filostrato,  translatea 
by  W.  M.  Rossetti.  Among  the  commonplaces  of  literary 
history  was  the  fact  that  Chaucer  was  in  great  part  in- 
debted for  his  Troylus  and  Cryseyde  to  Boccaccio's  Filo- 
strato;  but  no  Englishman  nor  yet  any  Italian,  it  would 
seem,  had  as  yet  determined  to  find  out  exactly  what  the 
debt  of  Chaucer  amounted  to.  Dr.  Furnivall  resolved 
that  so  yawning  a  gap  in  Chaucerian  study  must  be  filled 
up  through  the  agency  of  the  Chaucer  Society.  He 
requested  me  to  look  into  the  details,  and  I  did  so.  I 
collated  Chaucer's  poem  line  by  line  with  Boccaccio's 
— which  is  a  fluent  and  brilliant  piece  of  work,  not 
so  greatly  the  inferior  of  the  beautiful  English  poem  ; 
and  I  translated,  line  by  line,  all  the  passages  of  Boccac- 
cio which  had  been  translated  or  paraphrased  by  Chaucer, 


400        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

and  gave  likewise  a  rapid  summary  of  the  passages  not 
thus  utilized.  The  upshot  is  that  less  than  a  third  of 
the  lines  in  Chaucer  are  traceable  to  his  Italian  prototype  ; 
but,  with  slight  exceptions,  the  whole  structure  of  the 
story  is  so  traceable.  The  entire  performance  was  but  a 
small  tribute  for  me  to  pay  at  the  shrine  of  our  glorious 
Chaucer — and  it  might  be  said  of  Boccaccio  as  well  : 
such  as  it  was,  I  have  always  contemplated  it  with  some 
degree  of  satisfaction.  I  need  perhaps  hardly  add  that 
what  I  did  for  the  Chaucer  Society,  and  also  for  the 
Early  English  Text  Society,  was  a  simple  labour  of  love. 
In  my  nineteenth  section  I  have  made  a  very  brief 
reference  to  the  first  thing  which  I  wrote,  in  The  Chronicle 
in  1867,  concerning  Walt  Whitman.  I  had  known  the 
Leaves  of  Grass  almost  as  soon  as  it  was  published  in 
America,  in  1855  ;  a  copy  of  the  book  having  come  into 
the  hands  of  Bell  Scott  in  Newcastle,  and  he  having  pre- 
sented it  to  me.  I  read  it  with  great  delight  :  not 
supposing  that  it  is  impeccable  in  taste,  or  unassailable 
in  poetic  or  literary  form,  but  finding  in  it  a  majestic 
and  all-brotherly  spirit,  an  untrammelled  outlook  on  the 
multiplex  aspects  of  life,  and  many  magnificent  bursts 
of  sympathetic  intuition  allied  to,  and  strenuously  em- 
bodying, the  innermost  spirit  of  poetry.  That  the  form 
in  which  this  book  is  written  falls  short  of  some  of  the 
graces  and  fascinations  attainable  in  poetry  is  a  fact  so 
manifest  as  not  to  deserve  any  discussion  :  but  on  the 
other  hand  I  never  could  see  that,  because  Whitman 
omits  rhymes  and  omits  regularity  of  metre,  and  intro- 
duces into  his  compositions  passages  indistinguishable 
from  ordinary  prose,  therefore  his  performance  is  mere 
literary  bastardy,  and  has  no  title  to  be  numbered  among 
poems — or  more  especially  that  he  himself  has  no  title 


OTHER   EDITORIAL   WORK  401 

to  be  numbered  among  poets.  My  brother  once,  in  a 
letter  addressed  to  me,  called  Whitman's  writings 
"sublimated  Tupper."  But  I  conceive  that  he  was 
quite  wide  of  the  mark  in  this.  In  substance  Walt 
Whitman  does  not  bear  any  resemblance  to  Martin 
Farquhar  Tupper  :  in  form,  he  can  hardly  be  called  sub- 
limated beyond  Tupper.  His  form  differs  from  Tupper's 
in  two  particulars  :  (i)  it  is  still  more  alien  from  the 
regular  and  the  uniform,  and  (2)  it  has  an  incomparably 
more  powerful  (though  arbitrary)  sense  of  rhythmical 
roll.  Besides,  the  quality  of  the  language  is  totally 
different.  I  may  add  that  my  brother,  though  he  used 
this  scornful  expression,  was  not  wholly  inimical  to 
Whitman's  writings  :  at  one  period  indeed  he  valued 
them  not  a  little. 

Or  let  us  hear  what  Shelley,  who  knew  something 
about  poetry,  thought  on  the  subject,  abstractly  con- 
sidered :  I  quote  (making  some  omissions)  from  his 
Defence  of  Poetry.  "  The  distinction  between  poets  and 
prose-writers  is  a  vulgar  error.  Plato  was  essentially 
a  poet.  He  rejected  the  measure  of  the  epic,  dramatic, 
and  lyrical  forms,  because  he  sought  to  kindle  a  harmony 
in  thoughts  divested  of  shape  and  action,  and  he  forbore 
to  invent  any  regular  plan  of  rhythm  which  would 
include  under  determinate  forms  the  varied  pauses 
of  his  style.  Lord  Bacon  was  a  poet.  [This  does  not 
mean  that  he  wrote  Hamlet  and  The  Midsummer  Night's 
Dreamy  for  Shelley  attributed  these  works  to  Shakespear.] 
His  language  has  a  sweet  and  majestic  rhythm.  All  the 
authors  of  revolutions  in  opinion  are  not  only  neces- 
sarily poets  as  they  are  inventors,  nor  even  as  their 
words  unveil  the  permanent  analogy  of  things  by  images 
which  participate  in  the  life  of  truth,  but  as  their 


v 


402        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

periods  are  harmonious  and  rhythmical,  and  contain  in 
themselves  the  elements  of  verse.  The  parts  of  a  com- 
position may  be  poetical  without  the  composition,  as  a 
whole,  being  a  poem.  A  single  sentence  may  be  con- 
sidered as  a  whole,  though  it  may  be  found  in  the 
midst  of  a  series  of  unassimilated  portions.  All  the 
great  historians  —  Herodotus,  Plutarch,  Livy  —  were 
poets." 

But  I  need  not  pursue  this  subject,  either  by  the 
method  of  citation  or  by  that  of  disquisition.  My 
friend  Watts-Dunton,  an  adept  in  the  criticism  and  the 
writing  of  poetry,  once  told  me,  with  all  good-will — in 
1887 — that,  within  a  lapse  of  ten  years  from  then,  my 
character  as  a  critic  would  be  entirely  lost  because  I  was 
a  professed  admirer  of  Whitman.  Several  things  have 
happened  since  1887  :  one  of  them  is  that  the  fame 
of  Whitman  stands  now  much  higher  than  it  did  then — 
in  America,  in  England,  and  in  some  countries  of  foreign 
speech  as  well.  It  seems  quite  within  the  limits  of  pos- 
sibility that  Leaves  of  Grass  and  Drum-fapsy  with  all  their 
"  barbaric  yawp,"  may  outlive  some  poetic  volumes 
of  recent  years,  highly  lauded  for  literary  competence 
and  grace. 

Mr.  Cam  den  Hotten,  the  publisher  who  had  taken 
over  the  edition  of  Swinburne's  Poems  and  Ballads  with- 
drawn by  Moxon  and  Co.,  observed  my  article  on 
Whitman  in  The  Chronicle,  and  invited  me  to  make 
a  selection  of  his  poems  for  Hotten  to  publish.  I  was 
more  than  willing  to  comply,  and  the  selection  came  out 
in  1868.  As  some  of  Whitman's  poems  are  regarded 
as  indecent,  and  others  (though  quite  unconcerned  with 
indecent  subject-matter)  contain  phrases  open  to  the 
same  objection,  I  went  on  the  principle  of  omitting 


OTHER   EDITORIAL   WORK  403 

everything  to  which  any  such  imputation,  major  or 
minor,  can  attach.  The  consequence  is  that  I  excluded 
several  of  the  compositions  which  are  the  most  character- 
istic and  (apart  from  this  single  and  sometimes  disput- 
able objection)  the  most  praiseworthy.  Let  me  say 
here  that  I  wholly  dissent  from  the  idea  that  Whitman 
is  an  immoral  writer  ;  but  I  amply  agree  with  people 
who  think  that  some  of  his  writings,  in  whole  or  in 
part,  put  certain  matters  with  a  downrightness  and 
crudity  or  even  a  coarseness  of  expression  which  is 
rightly  resented  on  the  grounds  not  only  of  decorum 
and  delicacy  but  also  of  literary  art.  That  many  other 
writers  have  done  the  like  is  true,  and  writers  of  the 
very  highest  rank  :  yet,  when  we  find  a  contemporary 
doing  it,  we  are  justified  in  protesting — protesting  after 
due  discrimination  as  to  the  facts,  and  with  measure  in 
the  terms  we  employ.  Notwithstanding  the  omissions 
which  I  made,  I  put  together  a  considerable  number 
of  those  poems  by  Whitman  which  I  deem  the  best, 
forming  a  full-sized  volume.  It  was  on  the  whole  rather 
well  received,  and  made  Whitman  a  less  shadowy  person- 
ality in  the  world  of  letters  than  he  had  previously  been 
to  English  people  ;  a  second  edition  came  out  in  1886. 
Several  reviewers,  one  may  be  sure,  continued  to 
denounce  the  author  in  vigorous  terms  :  but  it  can 
fairly  be  averred  that,  for  some  years  after  1868,  he 
was  less  decried  in  England  than  in  his  own  country. 
It  has  sometimes  been  said  that  I  was  the  first  person 
who  introduced  Whitman  to  British  readers.  I  would 
willingly  claim  this  credit,  if  it  truly  pertained  to  me. 
I  was,  it  is  true,  the  first  who  brought  out  here  a 
volume  of  his  poems  ;  but,  so  far  as  reviewing  him  in 
a  sympathetic  spirit  is  concerned,  others  had  preceded 


4o4        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

me.  I  gather  that  the  first  of  all  was  George  Henry 
Lewes,  in  an  article  published  towards  1856  in  his 
weekly  review  The  Leader. 

Several  letters  from  Whitman  reached  me  about  the 
date  of  my  Selection  and  in  years  ensuing.  He  was  a 
punctual,  business-like,  and  warm-hearted  correspondent, 
not  addicted  to  discursive  utterances  of  any  kind, 
whether  personal,  descriptive,  or  abstract,  and  totally 
free  from  "  tall  talk."  Whatever  he  had  to  say  was  ex- 
pressed with  candour  and  moderation.  At  one  time  he 
surmised  that  I  was  intending  to  produce  an  expurgated 
edition  of  his  writings.  To  this  he  was  decidedly  op- 
posed :  but  he  had  no  objection  to  my  project  as  it  really 
stood — that  of  a  selection  of  particular  pieces  in  which 
there  was  nothing  to  expurgate. 

Madox  Brown  showed  my  Whitman  Selection  to  Mrs. 
Gilchrist,  the  widow  of  the  biographer  of  Blake.  She 
was  singularly  fascinated  by  the  poems,  caring  much 
more  for  the  message  they  conveyed,  and  the  spirit 
which  animated  the  writer,  than  for  any  question  of 
literary  right  or  wrong  which  may  be  raised  upon  them. 
She  next  read  Whitman's  complete  works,  and  read  them 
unshocked,  though  she  found  some  things  to  demur  to. 
She  wrote  me  some  letters  on  the  subject  in  a  truly  fer- 
vent and  exalted  strain  ;  the  gist  of  them  was  published 
later  on  in  an  American  periodical  named  The  Radical^ 
and,  to  my  judgment,  nothing  better  has  ever  been  said 
about  Walt  Whitman.  Afterwards,  having  to  settle  for 
two  or  three  years  in  the  United  States  to  promote  some 
family  interests,  she  made  the  poet's  acquaintance,  and 
saw  a  great  deal  of  him  on  an  intimate  footing.  Her 
elder  daughter  and  her  son  Herbert  (now  a  painter  of 
repute)  were  with  her.  She  found  Whitman,  as  a  man, 


OTHER   EDITORIAL   WORK  405 

worthy  of  the  same  cordial  and  reverential  respect  which 
she  had  accorded  to  him  as  a  writer.  She  took  a  very 
leading  part  in  two  subscriptions,  in  which  I  also  was 
concerned,  for  his  advantage  (one  of  them  before  she 
went  to  America,  and  one  after  her  return)  ;  for  Whit- 
man, in  sadly  broken  health  of  late,  was  a  poor  man, 
though  preserved  from  the  more  trying  discomforts  of 
penury  by  being  settled  en  famille  with  a  brother  ;  and, 
save  for  being  spitefully  vituperated,  was  for  years  almost 
utterly  neglected  by  his  compatriots.  The  first  subscrip- 
tion took  the  simple  but  not  inefficient  form  of  getting 
together  a  list  of  persons  in  the  United  Kingdom  to  buy 
his  books — Leaves  of  Grass  and  Two  Rivulets;  the 
second  subscription  was  a  "free-will  offering"  (as  we 
termed  it)  of  money.  Both,  and  more  especially  the 
first,  were  fairly  successful.  In  the  former  subscription 
Mr.  Robert  Buchanan,  who  was  an  earnest  and  forcible 
advocate  of  Whitman's  claims  as  an  author,  and  who 
had  lately  written  something  about  him  in  the  press,  was 
prominent.  I  felt  precluded  from  acting  along  with  him, 
owing  to  his  virulent  attacks  on  my  brother  in  1871  and 
1872  ;  he  therefore  worked  independently,  and  I  dare 
say  to  some  purpose. 

That  Whitman  underwent  a  fierce  ordeal  of  abuse  is 
notorious  enough  :  whether  he  was  well  served  by  the 
general  body  of  his  admirers  is  a  separate  question.  My 
own  opinion  is  that  he  was  not  well  served.  With  some 
exceptions  (and  I  make  Mrs.  Gilchrist  one,  though  she 
went  to  an  extreme)  the  admirers  were  too  profuse  and 
too  indiscriminate  :  they  appeared  bent  upon  sitting  with 
"  foolish  faces  of  praise,"  and  were  more  claqueurs  than 
critics.  Their  laudation  of  Whitman  was  hung  out  to 
view  as  if  it  had  been  an  advertisement  board  of  Mellin's 


4o6        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

Food  for  Infants  or  of  Bovril  on  the  margin  of  the  Falls 
of  Niagara.  The  tone  was  one  of  prepense  touting  or 
fulsome  over-geniality.  This  was  in  some  sense  natural 
with  persons  who,  regarding  Whitman  as  a  great  man 
and  a  genuine  poetic  innovator,  resented  the  torrent  of 
invective  directed  against  him  ;  but  it  was  not  the  right 
way  to  further  his  cause  among  thinking  people  not  yet 
committed  to  either  side.  I  hold  that  it  did  him  more 
harm  than  good,  and  tended  to  fasten  upon  him,  in  the 
eyes  of  serious-minded  and  mainly  well-disposed  in- 
quirers, an  aureole  rather  of  absurdity  than  of  glory. 
The  same  sort  of  thing  went  on  even  subsequent  to  his 
decease. 

Not  long  after  I  had  first  started  upon  my  Shelley 
work  Mr.  Bertrand  Payne  asked  me  to  co-operate  in 
another  scheme  of  his — that  of  bringing  out  the 
moderate-priced  edition  of  British  Poets  to  which  the 
general  name  of  Moxvifs  Popular  Poets  was  given.  I 
undertook  this.  The  range  of  dates  covered  by  the 
volumes  with  which  I  was  chiefly  concerned  ran  from 
Milton  to  Longfellow.  My  work  consisted  in  selecting 
for  reproduction  editions  of  the  various  authors  not  in- 
cluding any  copyright  matter  (unless  indeed  it  was  a 
copyright  of  the  Moxon  firm)  ;  arranging  the  contents 
according  to  my  best  discretion  ;  and  writing  for  each 
volume  a  condensed  account  of  the  poet — biographical, 
and  in  a  minor  degree  critical.  No  revision  or  emenda- 
tion of  text  was  attempted,  nor  had  I  anything  to  do 
with  correction  of  proofs.  According  to  the  original 
plan,  various  volumes  of  Selections  were  to  be  added.  I 
read  up  a  good  deal  for  these  volumes,  but  eventually 
only  two  were  brought  out — Humorous  Poems  and 
American  Poems.  This  edition  of  the  poets  circulated 


OTHER   EDITORIAL   WORK  407 

widely  at  one  time,  and  was  in  good  repute  :  I  suppose 
it  is  now  forgotten.  Half  a  dozen  volumes  of  the 
series  (perhaps  more)  had  appeared  when  suddenly  it 
was  announced  that  the  Moxon  firm  had  become 
bankrupt — Mr.  Payne's  management  of  it  had  been 
more  enterprising  than  circumspect.  The  business  was 
then  partially  merged  in  that  of  Messrs.  Ward  and 
Lock,  and  other  volumes  of  the  Popular  Poets  continued 
to  appear.  I  accepted  a  compromise  of  my  outstanding 
money-claims.  With  two  or  three  volumes  comprised 
in  the  series  towards  its  termination  I  had  no  personal 
concern — the  Edgar  Poe  volume  is  one. 

Some  acquaintances  of  mine,  and  possibly  some  other 
people  besides,  thought  well  of  the  notices  of  the  poets 
prefixed  by  me  to  these  volumes  of  Moxon's  series.  I 
recall  in  particular  Dr.  Hake.  After  a  while  therefore 
I  inquired  of  Messrs.  Ward  and  Lock  whether  they 
would  be  inclined  to  bring  out  those  notices  in  a 
collective  form  as  a  volume.  They  acquiesced,  and  in 
1878  the  book  was  published  under  the  title  of  Lives  of 
Famous  Poets.  It  contains  the  lives  of  Chaucer,  Spenser, 
Shakespear,  Milton,  Butler,  Dryden,  Pope,  Thomson, 
Gray,  Goldsmith,  Cowper,  Burns,  Wordsworth,  Scott, 
Coleridge,  Campbell,  Moore,  Byron,  Shelley,  Mrs. 
Hemans,  Keats,  Hood,  and  Longfellow.  To  make  it  a 
trifle  less  incomplete  as  a  guide  to  readers,  I  added 
between  each  pair  of  authors  the  names  of  poets  of 
intermediate  date,  with  the  years  of  their  birth  and 
death.  The  first  three  of  these  Lives,  and  those  of 
Butler,  Dryden,  Gray,  and  Goldsmith,  were  added  in 
the  volume,  as  the  works  of  those  authors  had  not 
appeared  in  the  Moxon  series.  A  second  edition  of  the 
book,  revised  where  it  appeared  requisite,  came  out  in 


4o8        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

1885.  To  dispose  of  all  these  poets  in  a  volume  of  less 
than  four  hundred  pages  necessarily  implies  that  the 
treatment  accorded  to  each  of  them  was  summary, 
indeed  scanty  ;  much  more  so  than  would  have  been 
desirable.  If  the  book  is  not  greatly  amiss  so  far  as  it 
goes,  that  is  all  the  praise  to  which,  in  my  most  self- 
complacent  moods,  I  can  deem  myself  to  be  entitled. 
Such  as  it  is,  this  book  is  one  of  the  least  inconsiderable 
which  I  have  produced  in  the  course  of  a  prolonged 
literary  life — and  an  industrious  though  not  a  fertile 
one  :  truly  a  chastening  thought  as  I  look  back  upon 
the  years. 

That  the  work  should  by  some  reviewers  be  accounted 
a  poor  one  was  nothing  surprising;  but  that  it  should 
be  alleged  to  amount,  in  point  of  critical  opinion  on  the 
various  poets,  to  a  mere  unqualified  eulogy  or  "  puff," 
is  what  I  should  never  have  expected  :  for  in  fact  some 
counter-considerations  are  presented  in  every  case,  and 
in  some  cases — such  as  those  of  Butler,  Campbell,  and 
Moore — the  estimate  might  fairly  be  pronounced  grudg- 
ing rather  than  the  contrary.  One  of  the  reviewers 
however  expressed  both  these  adverse  opinions  :  the 
book  was  poor,  and  the  critical  estimates  in  it  were  a 
mere  puff.  This  reviewer  was  Professor  William 
Minto,  writing  (if  I  remember  right)  in  The  Examiner^ 
a  gentleman  with  whom  I  had  some  slight  personal 
acquaintance.  He  was  highly  competent  to  form  and 
express  an  opinion  upon  any  book  of  such  a  theme  as 
mine.  How  he  came  to  entertain  that  view  as  to  the 
puff  I  have  never  understood. 


XXV 

THE   INLAND    REVENUE  AND 
SOME   OF   ITS  OFFICIALS 


T^HE  reader  of  my  fifth  section  is  already  aware 
that,  although  I  may  have  preferred  (and  I  certainly 
did  prefer)  to  be  doing  literary  work  rather  than  official 
work,  still  the  great  majority  of  my  time  up  to  1894 
was  taken  up  in  a  Government  office.  This  formed 
my  daily  duty  and  my  yearly  subsistence  :  to  literature 
I  was  never  able  to  devote  myself  save  in  the  off-hours 
of  the  day. 

As  the  official  side  of  my  life  took  up  so  large  a  part 
of  its  total,  I  will  say  here  a  few  words  about  some  of 
the  principal  personages,  Chairmen  and  Secretaries. 

The  Chairmen  were  in  succession  Mr.  John  Wood, 
Mr.  Thornton  (I  think),  Sir  Charles  Pressly,  Sir  William 
Henry  Stephenson  (being  the  first  with  whom  I  myself 
came  much  into  contact  in  business),  Sir  Charles  Herries, 
Sir  Algernon  E.  West,  the  Earl  of  Iddesleigh,  and  then 
Mr.  Alfred  Milner,  who  soon  became  Sir  Alfred,  and  is 
now  Viscount  in  requital  of  his  performances  in  South 
Africa.  (I  may  interpolate  here  my  unimportant  opinion 
that  the  whole  affair  of  the  war  with  the  two  Dutch 
republics  was  an  iniquitous  blunder  on  both  sides  ; 
iniquitous  on  the  side  of  the  British,  as  being  founded 
on  greed  and  the  arrogance  of  the  stronger,  and 


n. — i 


409 


4io        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

iniquitous  or  at  lowest  condemnably  wrong-headed  on 
the  side  of  President  Kruger,  as  being  a  reckless  hap- 
hazard in  which,  as  he  ought  to  have  known,  the 
independence  of  his  country  would  too  inevitably  be 
extinguished.  He  ought  never  to  have  thrown  the  die, 
for  the  counter-die  was  a  loaded  one.)  Mr.  Milner 
arrived  in  Somerset  House  with  a  fine  reputation  from 
his  antecedent  work,  especially  in  Egypt.  To  me  he 
appeared  a  solid-minded  man  and  a  highly  competent 
official  :  yet  I  did  not  perceive  his  abilities  to  amount 
to  anything  exceptional.  He  left  the  office  for  South 
Africa  at  much  the  same  time  when  I  retired  :  the 
actual  date  of  my  retirement  being  i  September  1894, 
but  I  had  discontinued  my  official  attendance  in  the 
middle  of  March  preceding.  Sir  George  Murray,  from 
the  Treasury  and  now  in  the  Post  Office,  replaced  Sir 
Alfred  Milner.  I  saw  him  only  once. 

As  to  my  knowledge  of  the  Chairman  and  Commis- 
sioners of  Inland  Revenue,  it  may  be  as  well  to  explain 
that,  in  the  earlier  years  of  my  clerkship,  from  1845  to 
1867,  I  came  very  little  into  contact  with  them.  In 
1867  I  was  promoted  to  the  position  of  Committee 
Clerk  ;  and  I  then  had  to  do  business  daily  with  one  or 
other  of  the  Commissioners,  but  not  with  the  Chair- 
man. A  further  promotion  followed  in  July  1869, 
when  I  became  Assistant  Secretary  on  the  Excise  side 
of  the  office  :  there  was  then  only  one  Excise  Assistant 
Secretary,  but  a  second  was  established  a  few  years  later. 
In  this  position  I  attended  at  the  Board,  headed  by  the 
Chairman  (Sir  William  Stephenson  in  1869),  every 
second  day  of  the  week,  and  at  times  every  day  ;  so 
that  I  had  ample  opportunity  for  judging  how  the 
business  was  performed.  And  let  me  say,  in  justice  to 


THE   INLAND   REVENUE  411 

the  Civil  Service  in  its  higher  ranks,  that  it  was  very 
well  performed,  without  scamping  or  negligence,  and 
with  every  desire  to  treat  each  case  according  to  the  law 
of  fairness,  often  leaning  towards  indulgence.  It  was 
obviously  impossible  for  the  Chairman  or  the  members 
of  the  Board  to  look  minutely  into  every  detail  of  the 
cases  :  it  depended  upon  the  secretaries  and  assistant 
secretaries  to  do  this,  and  to  present  the  papers  to  the 
Board  with  any  suitable,  but  mostly  very  brief,  remarks. 
Generally  the  papers  were  disposed  of  on  the  instant ; 
but  sometimes  reserved  for  careful  examination  and 
reflection.  Numerous  matters,  but  only  those  of  minor 
moment,  were  definitely  settled  by  myself.  In  the 
Inland  Revenue  an  assistant  secretary  is  not  a  person 
who  assists  the  secretary,  but  one  who  performs  work 
similar  to  that  of  the  secretary,  although  it  is  (in  theory, 
and  to  some  extent  in  practice)  of  a  rather  less  important 
kind.  This  work  consists  essentially  in  reading  and 
considering  a  number  of  letters  addressed  to  the  office 
on  a  variety  of  subjects  ;  making  orders  upon  some 
of  them  ;  presenting  others  to  a  commissioner  or  to 
the  Board,  to  obtain  signatures  to  orders,  or  to  have  the 
orders  made  ;  revising  the  drafts  of  the  letters  written 
to  carry  out  all  those  orders  ;  and  signing  the  letters 
themselves.  There  is  plenty  to  do  ;  and  it  could  only 
be  done  by  a  person  who  understands  the  law  and 
practice  of  the  department. 

While  I  think  that  the  business  of  the  Board  was 
constantly  well  transacted  in  my  time,  I  have  never- 
theless formed  the  opinion,  as  the  general  outcome 
of  my  experience,  that  administration  by  boards  is  really 
a  mistake.  I  should  prefer  a  system  of  strict  personal 
and  individual  responsibility — each  man  taking  the 


4i2        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

control  of  one  particular  branch  of  the  business,  and 
doing  the  whole  of  that  from  first  to  last.  If  he  does 
it  aright,  his  be  the  credit ;  if  he  does  it  amiss,  his  the 
blame.  When  I  left  the  office  the  Board  consisted  of  a 
chairman,  a  deputy-chairman,  and  two  commissioners 
(there  had  been  a  larger  number  of  commissioners  at  an 
earlier  date).  Then  there  were  two  secretaries  and  four 
assistant  secretaries,  half  of  them  for  the  stamps  and 
taxes,  and  half  for  the  excise.  This  makes  ten  officials 
in  all.  If  each  of  them  had  taken  up  one  section  of  the 
business,  and  disposed  of  it  single-handed  (but  consult- 
ing with  others  at  times  if  he  thought  fit),  I  apprehend 
that  this  would  have  been  the  better  arrangement — and 
some  diminution  in  the  number  of  officials  might  perhaps 
have  been  manageable.  When  the  Board  met,  the 
chairman — or  the  chairman  pro  tern. — was  the  only  one 
who  actually  dealt  with  the  papers  ;  the  other  members 
had  a  full  right  to  make  observations,  and  occasionally 
did  so — but  this  was  seldom,  and,  in  the  nature  of 
things,  could  not  be  continual.  And  even  the  chairman 
— except  with  regard  to  the  few  papers  which  he 
reserved  for  consideration — could  do  little  beyond  acting 
upon  the  summary  statement  of  facts  made  to  him  by 
the  secretary  or  assistant  secretary,  these  last  being 
the  only  persons  who  had  really  read  the  papers  with 
deliberation  and  attention,  and  had  mastered  their 
contents  in  substance  and  in  detail.  Why  should  not 
the  person  who  had  thus  read  the  papers  be  also  the 
person  to  make  an  order  upon  them  proprio  motu?  I 
fail  to  see  any  sufficient  reason  negatively,  and  indeed 
I  see  a  very  good  reason  affirmatively.  It  may  be  said 
that  this  would  rivet  the  responsibility  upon  that 
particular  person,  instead  of  diffusing  it  between  the 


THE   INLAND   REVENUE  413 

collective  Board  and  the  adviser  of  the  Board  ;  but  that 
I  regard  as  a  definite  advantage,  and  no  disadvantage. 
Another  consideration  is  that,  under  such  a  system  as  this, 
the  Lords  of  the  Treasury  would  find  it  less  practicable 
to  appoint  as  commissioner,  or  even  as  chairman,  a 
gentleman  totally  unversed  as  yet  in  the  business  of  the 
Inland  Revenue  ;  but  would  this  involve  any  detriment 
to  the  public  service  ? 

Besides  this  question  of  responsibility  in  a  Govern- 
ment office,  there  is  the  question  of  discipline.  My 
own  opinion  is  that  there  was  scarcely  sufficient  discipline 
in  the  Inland  Revenue  :  I  speak  here  only  of  the  head 
office  in  Somerset  House,  for  in  the  outdoor  service 
the  discipline  was  mostly  kept  up  steadily  enough,  both 
by  the  local  superiors  and  by  the  Board — who  certainly 
tempered  justice  with  mercy,  but  held  the  reins  firmly. 
In  the  office,  after  the  chairmanship  of  Mr.  Wood  had 
come  to  an  end,  the  subordinate  officials  (and  I  was  one 
of  them  up  to  1867)  appeared  to  me  to  go  very  much  on 
the  free-and-easy  principle  :  such  a  thing  as  direct  pun- 
ishment, or  a  rigid  summons  to  punctual  performance 
of  duty  under  penalties,  was  almost  unknown  among 
them.  Practically  the  only  check  upon  negligence  or 
inefficiency  was  that  the  delinquent  lost — and  even  this 
not  infallibly — his  prospect  of  promotion.  A  "  martinet" 
is  not  a  popular  character  in  England,  whether  in  official 
or  in  other  circles  ;  but  one  may  stop  short  of  being  a 
martinet  and  yet  be  a  disciplinarian,  and  this  with  bene- 
ficial results.  In  the  Inland  Revenue  the  avowed  prin- 
ciple for  many  years  past  has  been  promotion  by  merit, 
not  by  simple  seniority.  It  is  the  right  principle,  but 
risky  to  administer.  One  man  gets  an  opportunity, 
does  himself  credit,  and  is  marked  for  promotion.  This 


4i4        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

is  not  to  be  called  favouritism,  but  it  tends  to  produce 
the  like  effects.  Meanwhile  there  was  another  man,  of 
equal  deserving,  who  did  not  get  the  opportunity,  and 
is  passed  over.  I  hold  that  stringent  rules  should  be 
laid  down,  and  uniformly  acted  upon,  for  avoiding  any 
abuses  to  which  even  so  excellent  a  system  as  that  of 
promotion  by  merit  is  liable.  Modest  merit  is  quite  as 
worthy  of  regard  as  self-assertive  merit  ;  it  does  not 
always  fare  equally  well. 

Having  said  something  about  the  Chairmen  of  Inland 
Revenue,  I  will  now  do  the  like  for  the  Excise  Secre- 
taries. I  do  not  mention  the  Secretaries  for  the  Stamps 
and  Taxes,  of  whom  I  necessarily  knew  much  less. 

In  my  fifth  section  I  have  named  Mr.  John  Clayton 
Freeling,  who  was  Secretary  to  the  Board  of  Excise  when 
I  entered  in  1845.  On  ^e  amalgamation  of  the  Excise 
with  the  Stamps  and  Taxes,  he  retired,  and  was  succeeded 
by  Mr.  Thomas  Keogh,  who  had  been  Assistant  Secretary 
in  the  latter  establishment.  After  the  death  of  Mr. 
Keogh,  two  Secretaries  were  established — one  for  the 
Stamps  and  Taxes,  and  the  other  for  the  Excise.  The 
Excise  Secretary  was  Mr.  Thomas  Dobson,  who  had 
originally  been  an  ordinary  Excise  officer,  and  had  after- 
wards (under  a  praiseworthy  plan  introduced  by  Mr. 
Wood)  followed  a  course  of  chemical  instruction  in  the 
London  University  College.  After  him  came  Mr. 
William  Corbett  (not  any  relative  of  the  Mr.  C.  H. 
Corbett  mentioned  in  my  fifth  section)  ;  he  also  had 
been  an  Excise  officer  and  a  chemical  student,  and  the 
same  was  the  case  with  all  the  other  Excise  secretaries, 
up  to  and  including  Sir  Robert  Micks.  Next  there  was 
Mr.  Adam  Young.  He  smoothed  the  way  for  Gladstone's 
conversion  of  the  malt-duty  into  a  beer-duty,  and  was 


THE   INLAND   REVENUE  415 

thereupon  appointed  to  the  deputy-chairmanship  of  the 
office,  and  made  a  C.B.  It  was  on  the  occasion  of  Mr. 
Young's  appointment  to  the  post  of  secretary  from  that 
of  assistant  secretary  that  I  succeeded  him  in  the  lower 
capacity.  He,  on  leaving  the  secretaryship,  was  followed 
by  Mr.  Charles  Benjamin  Forsey.  Last  on  the  roll  was 
Mr.  Robert  Micks,  who  was  knighted  towards  1892. 
Of  all  the  secretaries — if  I  except  Mr.  Dobson — Sir 
Robert  Micks  was  the  one  whom  I  preferred  personally. 
He  was  highly  considerate  towards  myself,  and  courteous 
to  all  ;  a  man  of  strict  honour  and  of  superior  parts. 

Sir  Robert  Micks  retired  at  the  end  of  1893,  and  the 
question  then  arose  as  to  who  should  be  his  successor. 
I  was  sixty-four  years  of  age,  and  was  the  senior 
Assistant  Secretary.  The  junior  Assistant  Secretary 
(Excise)  was  Mr.  William  B.  Heberden,  my  junior 
by  some  years,  both  in  actual  age,  in  length  of 
service,  and  especially  in  tenure  of  an  assistant  secre- 
taryship. The  rule  of  the  service  was  that  an  official, 
on  attaining  the  age  of  sixty-five  (it  is  now  sixty-two), 
had  to  retire  forthwith  ;  save  that  in  some  exceptional 
cases  the  Board  recommended  the  Treasury  to  retain  the 
individual  for  two  or  three  years  further,  and  the 
Treasury,  at  their  option,  assented.  This  had  been 
done  as  regards  Sir  Robert  Micks.  In  1893  tne  Chair- 
man was  Sir  Alfred  (Viscount)  Milner,  who  was 
well  known  to  be  adverse  to  any  prolongation  beyond 
the  term  of  sixty-five  years.  When  ultimately  Sir 
Robert  relinquished,  the  primary  question  was  whether 
the  system  of  appointing  as  his  successor  a  person  who 
had  been  in  the  outdoor  Excise  service  should  be 
adhered  to,  or  whether  one  of  the  assistant  secretaries 
should  receive  the  promotion  instead.  A  secondary 


4i 6        WILLIAM    MICHAEL    ROSSETTI 

question  was  :  If  one  of  the  assistant  secretaries,  which 
of  the  two  ?  The  first  question  excited  a  considerable 
commotion  in  the  two  branches  of  the  service,  the  in- 
door and  the  outdoor  :  I  took  no  part  in  it,  being 
resolutely  averse  from  any  such  bandying-about  of 
jarring  interests.  As  to  the  secondary  question,  I  not 
unnaturally  considered  that,  as  between  Mr.  Heberden 
and  myself,  I  had  the  better  claim  :  but  here  again  I 
stood  aside — merely  representing  to  the  Board,  once 
for  all,  that  I  regarded  myself  as  fairly  on  the  roll  of 
candidates.  I  did  not  much  expect  to  get  the  appoint- 
ment— taking  into  account  my  advanced  age,  and  know- 
ing that  Mr.  Heberden  stood  high  in  the  esteem  of  the 
Board,  and  let  me  say  by  no  means  undeservedly  so. 
Like  Sir  Alfred  Milner,  he  is  an  Oxford  man,  brother  of 
the  Master  of  Brasenose  College.  The  appointment 
was  made,  and  it  fell  to  Mr.  Heberden,  whose  candi- 
dature was  preferred  to  that  of  a  highly  deserving 
representative  of  the  outdoor  branch,  Mr.  Steele.  Sir 
Alfred  Milner  announced  this  decision  to  me,  and  I  did 
not  hesitate  to  inform  him  that  it  was  unjust  so  far  as  I 
was  concerned.  He  replied  that,  as  I  should  under  any 
circumstances  have  to  retire  on  completing  my  sixty- 
fifth  year,  September  1894,  and  as  it  would  not  have 
been  desirable  to  have  at  that  date  a  renewal  of  the  con- 
flict between  the  two  branches  of  the  service,  I  had  been 
passed  over.  I  could  not  conceal  from  myself  that 
there  was  some  reason  in  this  plea,  as  far  as  it  went ;  at 
all  events,  like  so  many  other  pleas  in  the  region  of 
officialdom,  it  was  quite  plausible  enough  to  serve  the 
purpose  of  the  Board  for  doingthe  thing  which  they  had 
preferred  to  do.  The  affair  was  finished,  and  I  con- 
tinued, for  a  brief  interval  of  months,  to  discharge  my 


THE   INLAND   REVENUE  417 

duties  as  assistant  secretary.  The  interval  proved  to 
be  still  briefer  than  I  had  been  looking  for. 

My  salary  as  assistant  secretary,  when  I  was  ap- 
pointed in  1869,  was  £$o°'  After  a  few  years,  an 
increase  was  authorized,  and  it  stood  at  £900.  I 
generally  made  about  ^"100  a  year  by  literary  work,  a 
little  more  or  a  little  less.  Thus  my  income  between 
1869  (or  *  might  rather  name  1876)  and  1894  was  much 
about  an  annual  ^"1000.  This  was  affluence  in  com- 
parison with  what  I  had  been  accustomed  to  in  my  years 
of  childhood,  boyhood,  and  early  manhood.  My  family 
responsibilities  however  had  augmented,  and  I  seldom 
found  that  I  could  lay  anything  by,  except  indeed  in  the 
form  of  insurance.  My  income  of  -£ i ooo  was  only  about 
a  third  of  what  Dante  Gabriel  made  in  various  years 
from  1865  onwards — chiefly  by  his  profession  as  a 
painter,  and  partly  by  the  sale  of  his  books.  Christina, 
I  may  add,  had  next  to  no  settled  income  in  those  years, 
and  made  very  little  by  literature  until  quite  near  the 
close  of  her  life — it  was  not  nothing,  but  it  was  insig- 
nificant. 

The  atmosphere  of  the  Inland  Revenue  in  my  time 
does  not  appear  to  have  been  at  all  conducive  to  literary 
production  (that  of  the  Post  Office  was  much  more  so), 
if  I  except  a  few  works  written  on  subjects  of  revenue 
law  and  procedure.  I  could  only  specify  four  persons 
who  were  partially  concerned  with  the  belles  lettres. 
First  there  was  Mr.  Bartholomew  Simmons,  whom  I 
have  already  named  as  a  poet  in  a  rather  small  way. 
Then  there  was  Sir  Francis  Hastings  Doyle,  who  pro- 
duced a  few  poems  which  made  their  mark  ;  he  was 
assistant  solicitor  to  the  Board  of  Excise  when  I  first 
joined,  but,  on  the  amalgamation  with  the  Stamps  and 


4i 8        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

Taxes,  he  was  transferred  to  the  Board  of  Customs. 
Mr.  Alfred  Alaric  Watts,  whom  I  have  likewise  named, 
published  some  poems,  and  became  better  known  as  the 
biographer  of  his  father  Alaric  Alfred  Watts.  Mr.  W. 
Wilsey  Martin,  an  official  in  the  Tax  branch,  was  the 
author  of  two  volumes  of  poems,  one  of  them  printed 
in  1891 ;  these  show  a  full  degree  of  literary  competence, 
and  may  clearly  count  as  superior  to  the  average. 

It  has  often  been  said  that  a  government  clerk  (or  a 
city  clerk  or  the  like)  who  writes  books  or  articles  has  a 
less  good  chance  of  getting  on  in  his  office  than  one  who 
does  nothing  of  the  kind.  I  scarcely  know  whether  this 
was  the  case  with  myself  or  not ;  it  was  certainly  not  the 
case  in  the  earlier  years  of  my  service,  when  I  received, 
without  any  vestige  of  solicitation,  two  or  three  promo- 
tions out  of  my  turn.  There  were  some  few  of  my 
"  superior  officers  " — Sir  Robert  Micks  was  one — who 
obviously  thought  all  the  better  of  me  from  knowing 
that  I  had  some  sort  of  standing  in  the  literary  world  ; 
and  I  am  not  clear  that  any  of  them  looked  askance 
upon  me  on  this  account.  No  one  would  have  been 
justified  in  doing  so,  for  I  never  allowed  any  external 
employment  to  swerve  me  aside  one  jot  from  official 
diligence  and  efficiency.  Moreover  I  never  engaged  in 
any  journalistic  or  other  work  which  in  any  way  trenched 
upon  the  official  sphere,  and  which  might  thus  have  been 
regarded  as  letting-in  light  upon  "  the  secrets  of  the 
prison-house,"  and  tending  towards  a  breach  of  confi- 
dence. I  held  aloof  from  any  and  every  form  of  agita- 
tion. Still  I  think  there  may  be  something  in  that  general 
allegation  to  which  I  have  referred.  A  "  writing  man  " 
is  probably  accounted  to  be  one  who,  however  strict  in 
the  discharge  of  his  office  duty,  has  other  interests  which 


THE   INLAND   REVENUE  419 

lie  personally  prefers,  and  which  supplement  his  official 
emoluments  in  such  a  way  that,  if  he  is  officially  neg- 
lected, he  can  yet  rub  on  somehow.  And  thus,  if  it  comes 
to  be  a  question  between  the  blameless  writing  man  and 
the  blameless  non-writing  man  for  whom  some  marked 
liking  is  entertained,  the  claims  of  the  former  may  prove 
a  little  light  in  the  balance. 

And  so  much  in  brief  for  my  almost  half-century  of 
in  the  Inland  Revenue  Office. 


XXVI 

MY   MARRIAGE   AND 
MARRIED    LIFE 

Tj^OR  several  years  preceding  1873  I  had  had  a  warmly- 
affectionate  feeling  for  Lucy  Brown.  She  was  the 
mainstay  of  her  father's  house  ;  I  always  saw  her  sweety 
gentle,  and  sensible  ;  she  had  developed  ability  of  no* 
common  order  as  a  painter — her  water-colour  of  Romeo* 
and  'Juliet  in  the  vault  of  the  Capulets  was  more 
particularly  a  fine  work.  She  had  at  one  time — towards 
1855  to  1857 — been  an  inmate  in  my  own  family  ;  her 
education  in  those  years  of  girlhood  being  conductedy 
without  remuneration,  by  my  mother,  and  in  especial  by 
Maria ;  and  all  the  members  of  my  household  continued 
to  regard  her  with  marked  predilection.  Her  opinions 
on  religious  and  other  matters  had  become,  as  mine 
were,  of  a  very  independent  cast.  As  I  have  before 
stated,  she  joined  in  May  1873  the  travelling-party  to- 
Italy  formed  by  Bell  Scott  and  his  wife  and  Miss  Boyd 
along  with  myself.  During  that  journey  I  decided  that 
I  would  not  again  part  with  Lucy,  if  I  could  help.  I 
proposed  marriage  to  her,  and  was  accepted.  My  age 
was  then  not  far  from  forty-four,  hers  nearly  thirty. 
We  were  thus  of  course  perfectly  free  to  act  upon  our 
own  option  ;  but  we  had  the  satisfaction  of  securing  the 
cordial  approval,  she  of  her  father,  and  I  of  my  mother. 

420 


LUCY    BROWN   (ROSSETTI). 

PHOTOGRAPH    TAKEN    IN    ROME,     1873. 


MY  MARRIAGE  AND  MARRIED  LIFE     421 

We  married,  without  any  church  ceremony,  on  31 
March  1874,  and  went  off  forthwith  to  Naples,  through 
Paris,  Lyons,  and  Marseilles  ;  and  home  again  through 
Rome,  Florence,  and  Paris.  From  Naples  we  made  the 
usual  glorious  excursion  to  Paestum  through  Salerno 
and  Amalfi,  passing  the  spot  where  a  certain  Mr.  Moens 
had  not  very  long  before  been  seized  by  brigands,  who 
held  him  to  ransom — a  truly  heavy  sum.  After  that 
exploit  the  brigands  had  for  a  while  been  quiescent ; 
but  by  the  time  of  our  stay  in  Naples  there  was  again 
an  alarm  about  them,  and  we  found  that  neither  in  our 
own  hotel  nor  by  inquiry  at  neighbouring  hotels  could 
we  succeed  in  making  up  any  party  for  Paestum.  We 
therefore  went  alone.  Some  of  the  circumstances  en 
route  looked  a  trifle  suspicious  :  we  were  under  the 
escort  of  a  guide  who  had  pitched  upon  me  a  day  or 
two  before  in  an  excursion  towards  Capri,  and  who  had 
professed  to  be  drawn  to  me  by  my  being  (as  he  said)  so 
"affabile."  However,  all  passed  off  well,  and  the 
"  brigand-guide,"  as  we  often  laughingly  called  him  in 
the  sequel,  redelivered  us  to  our  hotel  unscathed.  Not 
long  afterwards  there  was  another  act  of  brigandage 
on  the  same  road. 

Just  as  summer  was  beginning  we  returned  to  the 
house  in  Endsleigh  Gardens,  where  (as  had  been  settled 
from  the  first)  my  mother  and  Christina  continued  to  be 
domiciled.  Eliza  and  Charlotte  Polidori  however  had 
vacated  their  apartments,  and  they  took  a  portion  of 
another  house,  in  Bloomsbury  Square.  Maria  also,  as 
soon  as  my  intended  marriage  had  been  announced, 
acted  upon  a  wish  she  had  long  entertained,  and  joined 
the  Sisters  of  All  Saints  (Anglican)  in  Margaret  Street, 
first  as  a  novice,  and  afterwards  as  a  member  fully 


422        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

professed.  Here  she  had  ample  scope  for  satisfying  her 
devotional  aspirations,  and  she  found  a  deep  joy  in 
the  religious  life,  without  renouncement  or  abatement 
however  of  her  family  affections.  I  soon  verified  to 
myself  the  truth  of  a  widely  diffused  opinion — that  a 
married  couple  had  better  live  by  themselves  than  along 
with  other  members  of  the  family,  however  well  dis- 
posed. No  two  persons  could  be  less  encroaching  or 
less  interfering,  or  more  observant  of  the  rightful  rule 
that  the  wife  is  the  mistress  of  the  house,  than  my 
mother  and  sister  ;  and  yet  the  harmony  in  the  house- 
hold was  not  unflawed,  and  was  sometimes  rather 
jarringly  interrupted.  It  was  obviously  a  great  grief  to 
my  relatives  to  find  that  Lucy,  to  whom  they  had  been 
looking  as  a  possible  corrective  of  my  heterodox 
opinions,  was  just  as  far  from  orthodoxy  as  myself. 
Not  that  they  either  badgered  or  slighted  her  on  this 
account ;  but  the  feeling  existed  on  their  side,  and  on 
the  other  side  the  cognizance  of  the  feeling.  After 
giving  a  fair,  or  indeed  a  prolonged,  trial  to  the  experi- 
ment of  a  joint  household,  we  decided  to  separate.  My 
mother  and  Christina,  along  with  my  two  aunts,  took 
a  house  for  themselves,  30  Torrington  Square,  at  Michael- 
mas 1876  ;  while  I,  with  my  wife  and  the  daughter  born 
to  us  in  1875,  remained  in  Endsleigh  Gardens.  My 
mother,  with  her  constant  superiority  to  self-interest, 
declined  an  offer  that  I  made  to  contribute  to  her  support 
after  her  removal ;  and  in  fact  she,  with  Christina  in 
her  wake,  and  joining  resources  with  her  sisters,  had 
sufficient  means  for  living  in  comfort  on  the  quiet  scale 
they  affected.  The  separation  was  highly  painful  to  my 
mother,  and  only  a  little  less  so  to  myself.  We  per- 
ceived it  however  to  be  a  tribute  demanded  by  prudence 


MY  MARRIAGE  AND  MARRIED  LIFE     423 

and  expediency,  and  conducive  in  the  long  run  to  the 
comfort  of  all  parties.  Such  it  proved.  There  appears 
to  be  a  general  rule,  suitable  at  any  rate  to  English 
people  :  It  is  not  well  for  a  wife  to  be  housed  with  her 
mother-in-law,  nor  yet  for  a  husband  with  his. 

There  are  various  portraits  of  my  wife  extant.  One, 
clearly  the  finest  as  a  work  of  art,  is  by  my  brother, 
taken  in  the  summer  of  1874,  and  reproduced  in  the 
book  of  his  Family-letters.  It  is  like  her,  and  gives 
a  true  idea  of  a  face  in  which  one  could  read  candour, 
superior  sense,  thoughtfulness,  amenity,  and  dignified 
self-possession.  Some  persons  have  considered  however 
that  this  portrait  assimilates  somewhat  too  much  to  the 
known  Rossettian  type  to  be  an  absolute  likeness.  Here 
I  discern  some  foundation  of  truth  ;  and  those  who  think 
so  can  modify  the  impression  derived  from  the  Rossetti 
portrait  by  consulting  another,  done  by  Madox  Brown 
towards  1877,  in  which  my  wife  appears  along  with  her 
firstborn  infant  daughter.  This  (a  fine  life-sized  colour- 
chalk  drawing  in  my  house)  presents  her  in  an  ordinary 
domestic  aspect — I  think  too  ordinary,  and  approaching 
the  commonplace.  Something  intermediate  between 
the  two  portraits  would  come  nearer  to  the  mark  than 
either.  There  are  also  some  heads  of  her  produced  by 
Brown  from  infancy  to  early  girlhood  ;  and  two  good 
and  pleasing  photographs  proper  to  1873  and  1874.  In 
her  later  years  two  or  three  other  photographs  were 
taken,  but  always  with  marked  ill-success.  Besides  fine 
personal  qualities  indicated  above,  my  dearly  loved  wife 
had  prudence,  economy  combined  with  liberality,  help- 
fulness, purity  of  mind,  practicality,  great  promptitude 
to  meet  emergencies,  and  an  elevated  tone  of  thought, 
loyal  to  the  high  things  in  life  and  in  art  and  literature. 


424        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

The  mean  and  trivial  she  despised.  Her  domestic 
affections  were  warm,  and  in  motherhood  she  was  most 
devoted.  Her  fondness  for  her  father,  who  recipro- 
cated it  well,  had  always  been  most  marked  ;  and 
continued  so,  especially  in  the  earlier  years  of  our 
marriage.  To  pretend  that  no  human  infirmities 
mingled  with  her  virtues,  or  that  she  and  I  were  never 
at  variance  on  any  point,  would  be  childish.  I  cherish 
the  remembrance  of  the  virtues,  and  make  the  infirmities 
"  alms  for  oblivion."  She  was  much  more  partial  to 
society  than  I  had  ever  been — chiefly  the  society  of 
persons  whom  she  esteemed  intellectually  ;  and  thus  the 
number  of  people  whom  I  saw  during  all  the  earlier 
portion  of  my  married  life,  either  in  my  own  house 
or  by  calling  upon  them,  was  very  much  larger  than 
I  had  been  accustomed  to  in  previous  years.  My  wife 
conversed  easily  and  well  (as  her  father  did),  without 
pretension,  enjoying  the  interchange  of  mind  with  mind; 
besides,  she  thought  it  advantageous,  in  a  social  point 
of  view,  that  one  should  not  be  isolated  and  left  in  the 
lurch.  Her  voice  in  talking  was  one  of  the  most  agree- 
able known  to  me  ;  I  often  wondered  that  she  had  no 
singing  voice  at  all,  though  she  delighted  in  music. 
Although  I  had  become  an  "old  bachelor"  before 
I  wedded,  I  fell  very  readily  into  the  tone  and  habits 
of  a  married  man,  and  congratulated  myself  upon  the 
change  in  my  condition.  "  Better  late  than  never." 

We  had  been  married  hardly  more  than  half  a  year 
when  a  great  grief  befell  my  wife  in  the  death  of 
her  half-brother  Oliver  Madox  Brown.  He  died  of 
pyaemia  (blood-poisoning  with  fever  and  abscesses)  on 
5  November  1874,  aged  less  than  twenty  years.  His 
illness  had  lasted  a  full  couple  of  months  ;  how  it  arose 


MY  MARRIAGE  AND  MARRIED  LIFE     425 

no  one  could  well  define,  unless  it  might  be  that  the 
house  and  its  surroundings  were  not  healthy — one  of 
the  well-built  houses  of  the  Brothers  Adam  in  Fitzroy 
Square,  tenanted  by  Ford  Madox  Brown  and  his  family 
since  about  1866.  Mr.  John  Marshall  attended  con- 
stantly throughout  the  illness,  and  Sir  William  Jenner 
was  called  in  in  consultation.  "  Nolly,"  as  we  all  named 
him,  was  a  youth  of  manifest  genius  and  high  promise, 
the  centre  of  his  father's  hopes.  There  can  be  but  few 
youths  under  twenty  recorded  in  The  'Dictionary  of 
National  Biography :  he  is  one  of  them.  He  begap 
painting  towards  the  age  of  thirteen,  showing  very  good 
powers  of  invention,  of  composition  and  colour,  and  of 
general  execution  ;  he  dealt  with  both  figure-subjects 
and  landscape.  Then  he  took  to  romance-writing, 
varied  to  some  minor  extent  by  verse-writing.  In  1873 
he  published  a  short  romance  named  Gabriel  Denver  (it 
afterwards  appeared  in  its  original  and  preferable  form, 
and  with  its  first  title  'The  Black  Swan).  Other  writings 
followed,  and  were  published  after  his  death  ;  the  best 
of  them  is  a  Devonshire  tale,  uncompleted,  called  The 
Dwale  Bluth.  So  good  a  judge  of  novels  as  Justin 
McCarthy  entertained  the  most  sanguine  expectations 
of  what  Oliver  Brown  might  and  would  do,  and  hailed 
him  as  not  improbably  "  the  coming  man  "  ;  he  has  said 
so  in  print.  Personally,  Oliver  was  a  somewhat  singular 
sort  of  youth.  Most  lads  in  their  teens  are  a  little 
"  lubberly,"  and  in  this  respect  he  did  not  differ  from 
his  compeers  ;  his  talk  partook  of  the  humorsome  and 
the  observant,  and  there  seemed  mostly  to  be  something 
in  it  which  did  not  quite  come  out  of  it.  He  evidently 
appreciated  good  things  in  art  and  literature,  but  with  a 
kind  of  reluctance  to  praise  them,  and  more  disposition 

II. — K 


426        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

towards  a  blunt  sort  of  banter.  No  doubt  he  must  have 
expressed  himself  more  fully  and  liberally  in  talking  to 
friends  of  about  his  own  age — the  chief  of  whom  was 
Philip  Bourke  Marston — than  to  the  middle-aged  or 
elderly.  From  his  earliest  years  he  had  been  excessively 
fond  of  all  sorts  of  animals,  and  apt  in  training  them — 
a  trait  which  I  have  always  regarded  as  a  most  favourable 
indication  of  the  essential  character.  In  person  he  was 
fairly  tall  and  long-limbed,  with  a  long  visage  bearing 
some  resemblance  to  his  father's,  but  in  my  opinion 
considerably  less  good-looking.  At  the  request  of  his 
father,  Nolly's  brother-in-law  Francis  HuefFer  and  my- 
self became  the  ostensible  editors  of  his  posthumous 
writings  ;  in  point  of  fact,  the  prefatory  memoir  to  the 
book  is  much  more  the  doing  of  Madox  Brown  than  of 
ourselves,  and  it  enters  into  some  details  which  we  would 
have  treated  more  cursorily.  A  longer  memoir,  filling 
a  volume,  was  brought  out  by  Mr.  John  H.  Ingram  in 
1883 — Oliver  Madox  Brown,  a  Biographical  Sketch. 

The  month  of  November  seemed  in  these  years  to  be 
an  ill-omened  one  in  our  families.  In  1874  came  the 
death  of  Oliver  ;  in  1875  tnat  °^  Mrs.  Cooper,  a  first 
cousin  of  my  wife  and  the  chief  companion  of  her  girl- 
hood ;  in  1876,  that  of  my  sister  Maria.  In  the  autumn 
of  1877  Dante  Gabriel  was  extremely  ill,  and  I  thought 
his  end  not  unlikely  to  ensue  in  November  ;  by  that 
date,  however,  he  had  taken  a  turn  for  the  better,  and  his 
life  was  prolonged  until  1882.  Mrs.  Cooper  has  been 
already  mentioned  by  me  (Vol.  I,  p.  137).  Being  home 
from  India  for  a  while,  she  was  suddenly  seized  with 
apoplexy  at  a  silk-mercer's  in  St.  Paul's  Churchyard,  and 
died  on  the  spot,  aged  thirty-five  or  less — a  vivacious, 
pleasant  woman.  Her  remains  were  brought  round  to 


MARIA    FRANCESCA    ROSSETTI. 

c'.     1874. 


MY  MARRIAGE  AND  MARRIED  LIFE     427 

our  house,  whence  the  funeral  was  conducted.  Maria 
Rossetti  had  entered  very  earnestly  into  the  work  of  the 
All  Saints'  Sisterhood,  which  is  partly  a  nursing  order. 
Her  health  soon  showed  symptoms  of  weakening,  and 
she  did  little  in  the  way  of  nursing,  but  much  more  in 
that  of  teaching.  She  was  highly  valued  by  the  Mother 
Superior  (Miss  Brownlow)  and  by  the  members  of  the 
Community,  and  was  treated  with  every  consideration. 
She  regarded  herself  as  a  vowed  nun,  in  the  strictest 
sense  of  the  term  ;  her  vow  being  just  as  binding  on  her 
conscience  and  her  conduct  as  if  it  had  been  enforcible 
by  English  law.  In  the  summer  of  1876  it  became 
apparent  that  Maria  was  in  a  truly  dangerous  condition 
of  health  ;  there  was  an  internal  tumour,  followed  by 
dropsical  symptoms.  She  had  the  best  medical  advice — 
that  of  Dr.  Wilson  Fox  and  perhaps  some  others.  In 
October  of  that  year  I  was  spending  my  vacation,  with 
my  wife  and  infant  daughter,  at  Newlyn,  Cornwall  ;  we 
received  such  news  of  Maria's  ill-health  as  hurried  us 
back  to  London.  She  was  indeed  in  a  most  alarming 
state.  I  saw  her  various  times,  and  we  had  more  than 
one  grave  and  touching  colloquy  on  the  subject  of 
religion.  Her  Christian  faith,  conviction,  and  personal 
confidence,  were  of  the  most  absolute  kind  ;  she  viewed 
with  solemn  gladness  her  inevitably  approaching  death, 
longing  to  be  with  Christ.  Her  sufferings,  partially 
palliated  by  opiates,  were  severe,  but  borne  with  inflexible 
resignation.  Of  all  the  persons  I  have  known,  Maria 
was  the  most  naturally  and  ardently  devotional — cer- 
tainly more  so  than  Christina,  as  a  matter  of  innate 
tendency.  She  would  I  believe  (though  born  rather  timid 
than  otherwise)  have  gone  to  the  stake  with  the  greatest 
intrepidity  for  any  religious  tenet  which  she  held 


428        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

precious — such  for  instance  as  the  real  presence  of 
Christ  in  the  eucharist.  The  end  came  on  the  24th 
November  1876.  She  is  buried  in  Brompton  Cemetery, 
as  "  Sister  Maria  Francesca,"  among  the  other  "  Sisters 
of  the  Poor."  Maria  left  (besides  some  minor  things) 
one  good  book,  A  Shadow  of  Dante,  which  has  gone 
through  several  editions,  and  continues  to  be  in  steady 
request. 

My  wife  and  I,  being  housed  in  Endsleigh  Gardens, 
were  within  very  easy  reach  of  Madox  Brown's  residence 
in  Fitzroy  Square,  and  of  course  we  saw  him  and  his 
wife  with  extreme  frequency,  along  with  Mathilde  Blind 
when  settled  in  the  same  house.  From  1879  however 
he  had  to  be  away  much  in  Manchester  to  see  after  the 
series  of  mural  paintings  which  he  had  undertaken  for 
the  Townhall  ;  and  there  in  August  1881  he  wholly 
settled  for  the  same  purpose,  not  returning  to  live  in 
London  until  1888  or  so.  He  then  took  the  house 
No.  i  St.  Edmund's  Terrace,  Regent's  Park  (near 
Primrose  Hill),  next  door  but  one  to  my  present 
residence.  My  wife,  with  one  or  other  of  our  children, 
stayed  with  him  in  the  great  (and  mostly  ugly)  Lancashire 
city  every  now  and  then :  and  so  did  I  at  convenient 
intervals.  He  was  moreover  very  actively  employed 
in  1887  with  some  of  the  art  decorations  for  the  build- 
ing in  which  was  held  a  great  exhibition  for  the  jubilee 
of  Queen  Victoria's  reign.  Settled  in  London  (after 
being  at  first  at  Merton),  but  in  localities  far  more 
distant  than  Fitzroy  Square,  was  also  the  Hueffer  family 
— Franz  Hueffer,  with  his  wife  Cathy  (Lucy's  younger 
half-sister),  and  three  children.  They  naturally  were 
often  with  us,  and  we  with  them.  Of  other  relatives, 
the  one  whom  my  wife  saw  oftenest  was  Mrs.  Helen 


MY  MARRIAGE  AND  MARRIED  LIFE     429 

Bromley,  the  mother  of  Mrs.  Cooper  ;  the  old  lady 
however  continued  living  at  Gravesend,  so  their  inter- 
course was  intermittent.  She  died  in  1886.  On  my 
own  side  of  the  family  there  were  my  mother  and 
Christina,  and  my  aunts  (Eliza  and  sometimes  Charlotte), 
in  Torrington  Square.  I  looked  them  up  regularly, 
taking  care  never  to  miss  a  week  :  not  to  speak  of 
frequent  visits  by  my  wife,  and,  with  her  or  with  a 
nurse,  the  children.  They  were  also  pretty  often  in  our 
house  ;  but,  as  my  mother  was  already  turned  of  seventy- 
six  when  she  removed  to  Torrington  Square,  and 
Christina  was  in  indifferent  health,  the  calls  were  mostly 
made  by  ourselves. 

Dante  Gabriel  scarcely  ever  came  to  see  us.  Bidding 
a  final  adieu  to  Kelmscott  Manor  House  in  the  late 
summer  of  1874,  he  returned  to  No.  16  Cheyne  Walk, 
and  during  some  ensuing  months  he  did  call  a  few 
times.  From  the  autumn  of  1875  to  ^at  °f  1876  he 
was  little  in  London — most  of  the  time  at  Bognor. 
Again,  from  the  summer  to  the  autumn  of  1877  a 
serious  illness  kept  him  at  the  seaside  for  many  weeks. 
His  growing  habit  of  seclusion  continued  on  the  in- 
crease ;  and,  after  his  return  to  London  at  the  end  of 
1877,  it  may  be  said  that  he  went  nowhere — the  only 
exception  being  that  he  did  not  fail  to  visit  our  mother 
and  Christina  every  now  and  then.  He  saw  our  eldest 
child  Olivia  twice  or  thrice  in  her  earliest  infancy  ;  the 
other  four  he  never  saw  at  all.  And  yet  he  took  an 
interest  in  all  of  them,  and  was  pleased  to  hear  any  little 
details  of  how  they  were  going  on.  This  was  assuredly 
a  rather  curious  state  of  things,  as  affecting  two  brothers 
who  always  had  been  and  always  continued  to  be 
extremely  fond  of  one  another.  To  some  readers  it 


430        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETT1 

might  seem  almost  unintelligible  ;  to  others — who  take 
into  account  character,  habits,  occupations,  distances 
between  residences,  and  so  on — it  becomes  intelligible, 
though  never  other  than  singular.  From  what  I  have 
said  it  may  be  perceived  that  in  the  opening  years  of  my 
marriage  I  myself  had  not  continual  opportunities  of 
seeing  my  brother,  who,  between  my  return  from  the 
wedding  trip  and  the  close  of  1877,  was  absent  from 
London  about  fifteen  months  in  all.  In  1878  I  ought 
to  have  seen  him  somewhat  oftener  than  I  did  :  as  he 
had  given  up  all  idea  of  calling  on  me,  it  would  have 
devolved  upon  me  always  to  make  the  call  on  him. 
From  the  autumn  of  1879  I  determined  to  set  this 
matter  right,  and  I  regularly  went  round  to  him  on  one 
appointed  day  in  the  week,  at  times  oftener.  My  week- 
days being  always  taken  up  at  my  office,  and  about  half 
my  Sundays  being  placed  at  my  wife's  disposal  for  call- 
ing upon  friends,  my  own  family  visits,  whether  to 
brother  or  mother,  could  only  be  made  after  office 
hours.  I  went  round  to  Dante  Gabriel  straight  from 
Somerset  House  ;  sometimes — more  especially  in  the 
latter  months  of  1880  and  the  earlier  of  1881 — my  wife 
joined  me  at  Cheyne  Walk. 

In  the  autumn  of  1874  the  firm  of  Morris,  Marshall, 
Faulkner,  and  Co.,  was  dissolved,  and  was  reconstituted 
as  Morris  and  Company.  In  the  original  firm  there  had 
been  seven  members  ;  Morris  now  wished  to  be  the 
only  one  of  those  seven.  Faulkner,  Burne-Jones,  and 
Webb,  seconded  his  preference,  and  retired  volun- 
tarily, without  receiving  or  seeking  any  compensation. 
Marshall  and  Rossetti  were  compensated.  Brown  ob- 
jected extremely  to  retiring,  and  resented  the  general 
course  of  Morris's  proceedings  in  this  matter.  Under 


MY  MARRIAGE  AND  MARRIED  LIFE     431 

compulsion,  he  also  left  the  firm,  with  compensation. 
My  own  general  view  as  to  the  facts  is  this  :  Morris 
had  essentially  reason  on  his  side,  but  he  pressed  it  too 
egoistically  ;  Brown  had  essentially  right  on  his  side,  but 
he  strained  it  too  obstructively.  To  my  great  regret, 
this  affair  produced  a  total  breach  in  the  friendship 
between  Brown  and  the  Morris  family,  also  the  Burne- 
Jones  family  :  as  regards  Burne-Jones,  there  had 
previously  been  some  smouldering  embers  of  discontent 
on  Brown's  part,  as  to  which  I  need  say  nothing. 
Naturally  my  wife  sided  with  her  father  ;  she  dropped 
the  acquaintance  of  these  pre-eminent  men  and  their 
families,  and  I  thus  lost  sight  of  them  save  at  rare  and 
casual  intervals.  Few  things  could  have  been  less  to 
my  liking  than  this  :  from  first  to  last  I  had  never  any 
•quarrel  of  my  own  with  any  member  of  this  group  of 
my  old  familiars.  But  the  rule,  "  therefore  shall  a  man 
cleave  unto  his  wife,"  represents  a  genuine  practical 
requirement  in  life,  as  well  as  a  genuine  conception  of 
what  ranks  highest  in  the  affections,  and  therefore  I 
accepted  my  position  as  it  came.  There  were  four  others 
of  my  old  friends  whom  my  wife,  either  from  the  first 
or  in  the  course  of  years,  viewed  with  disfavour — Mrs. 
Heimann,  Woolner,  Allingham,  and  Boyce  ;  circum- 
stances had  already  removed  them  a  good  deal  out  of 
my  orbit,  so  this  did  not  make  any  grave  difference, 
though  it  was  a  matter  of  regret  to  me.  I  should  add 
that  after  a  lapse  of  several  years  Madox  Brown,  and 
consequently  my  wife,  were  fairly  reconciled  with 
Morris,  and  tolerably  so  with  Burne-Jones  :  the  old  free 
interchange  of  close  friendly  relations  was,  however,  re- 
established no  more. 

After  our  wedding  trip  to  Naples,  we  did  not  aspire 


432        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

to  make  any  longish  jaunts  abroad  ;  less  distant  and  less 
expensive  English  excursions,  mostly  at  the  seaside, 
suited  the  matrimonial  purse.  We  did  however,  with 
Brown  and  his  wife,  go  in  1875  *°  various  cities  in 
Belgium  and  Holland,  chiefly  Antwerp.  He  had  in 
view  a  picture  to  be  called  Rubens *s  Ride  (Rubens  and 
some  friends  riding  out  for  pleasure),  for  which  he 
wished  to  study  the  polders  and  other  details  of  Flemish 
scenery  ;  the  picture,  after  all,  was  not  painted.  Other 
places  where  I  went  with  my  wife,  and  generally  with 
our  children,  up  to  1886  inclusive,  were  Bournemouth, 
Newlyn,  Broadstairs,  Sompting,  Gorleston,  Charmouth 
(near  Lyme  Regis),  Chapel-en-le-Frith  (in  the  Derby- 
shire Peak  district),  Littlehampton,  Birchington-on-Sea, 
Southend,  Hythe,  and  Ventnor  with  other  parts  of  the 
Isle  of  Wight.  Edinburgh,  Brighton,  Herne  Bay,  and 
Eastbourne,  were  revisited  by  one  or  both  of  us — also 
Paris  and  Calais.  At  Herne  Bay,  in  1884,  we  made 
acquaintance  with  a  lady,  Mrs.  Allport,  who  has  ever 
since  been  one  of  our  most  valued  friends — always 
genially  attentive  to  my  wife  and  young  children,  and 
now  to  my  daughters. 

In  marrying,  Lucy  had  not  contemplated  giving  up 
her  profession  as  a  painter — for  by  that  time  she  regarded 
it  as  a  profession  ;  she  had  done  some  very  superior 
work  in  point  of  invention,  expression,  and  colouring, 
and  was  steadily  advancing  in  general  execution  and 
handling.  She  was  ambitious  of  excelling,  and  not  in- 
different to  fame  ;  and  she  had  an  exalted  idea  of  art 
and  its  potencies.  After  our  marriage  she  tried  more 
than  once  to  set  resolutely  to  work  again  ;  but  the  cares 
of  a  growing  family,  delicate  health,  and  the  thousand 
constant  interruptions  which  are  not  the  less  real  at  the 


MY  MARRIAGE  AND  MARRIED  LIFE     433 

time  for  being  dim  in  the  after-memory  always  impeded 
her,  and,  very  much  to  her  disappointment  and  vexation, 
she  did  not  succeed  in  producing  any  more  work  adapted 
for  exhibition.  Painting,  far  more  than  writing,  was  her 
natural  line  of  effort.  Being  thwarted  in  painting,  she 
wrote  two  or  three  things  which  were  published  ;  chiefly 
the  Life  of  Mary  Wolhtonecraft  Shelley  which  appeared  in 
the  series  named  Eminent  Women.  Mr.  Ingram  (who 
had  written  the  biography  of  Oliver  Madox  Brown,  and 
had  rendered  excellent  service  as  an  editor  and  biographer 
of  Edgar  Poe)  was  the  editor  of  this  series.  My  wife 
and  I  saw  a  good  deal  of  Mr.  Ingram,  and  both  of  us 
entertained  a  sincere  liking  and  esteem  for  him.  He 
wished  Christina  to  undertake  some  other  volume  in  the 
series,  proposing  to  her  more  especially  Mrs.  Browning, 
and  afterwards  Mrs.  Radcliffe.  Christina  was  in  the 
abstract  well  inclined  to  assent ;  but  one  or  other  diffi- 
culty interposed,  and  the  project  failed.  My  wife  treated 
Mrs.  Shelley  in  a  spirit  of  candour,  sympathy,  and  in- 
telligence. Some  valuable  unpublished  materials  were 
placed  at  her  disposal  (not  however  by  the  Shelley  family, 
who,  as  it  turned  out,  were  promoting  the  issue  of  a 
different  biography,  the  work  of  Mrs.  Julian  Marshall)  ; 
and  she  produced,  I  conceive,  a  very  readable  book 
(published  in  1890),  in  which  one  can  trace  a  hand,  not 
indeed  of  highly-trained  literary  accomplishment,  but  of 
good  innate  gifts.  I  naturally  gave  her  any  amount  of 
information  and  aid  to  which  I  was  equal,  or  of  which 
she  was  wishful ;  but  neither  she  nor  I  had  the  least 
desire  that  opinions  or  composition  of  mine  should  be 
introduced  as  a  substitute  for  hers. 

Lucy's  mother  had  died  of  consumption  at  a  quite 
early    age,    twenty-seven.      In    her    girlish    years,    the 


434        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

daughter's  state  of  health  had  not  been  such  as  to  excite 
any  anxiety ;  but,  even  before  she  went  on  her  Italian 
trip  of  1873,  she  had  had  an  illness  showing  delicacy  of 
the  chest.  During  our  married  life  up  to  the  end  of 
1884  symptoms  of  the  same  kind  frequently  occurred  ; 
they  came  on  and  off,  without  affecting  her  condition  in 
any  very  serious  degree.  But  in  February  1885  a 
most  grave  illness  began.  It  was  caused  apparently  by 
her  getting  out  of  bed  at  night,  and  walking  barefoot  to 
an  upper  floor,  to  look  after  our  little  daughter  Helen, 
who  had  given  some  audible  sign  of  uneasiness.  Next 
day  my  wife  was  alarmingly  ill  with  bronchial  pneumonia. 
The  attack  lasted  a  long  while  ;  but  in  April  of  the  same 
year  she  was  sufficiently  recovered  to  go  to  Bourne- 
mouth, and  again  in  July.  From  this  formidable  malady 
she  rallied  very  considerably  at  times,  more  especially 
during  the  period  (referred  to  in  my  sixteenth  section) 
when  she  kept  slabs  of  virgin  cork  about  the  bedroom — 
an  expedient  which,  however  odd  or  seemingly  absurd, 
did  appear  to  be  efficacious  in  no  slight  degree.  Still, 
the  evil  was  never  extirpated,  nor  even  thoroughly  sub- 
dued ;  it  proceeded  from  stage  to  stage,  and  ended  in 
phthisis. 

Under  medical  advice,  and  after  a  prolonged  and 
trying  sojourn  at  Ventnor,  my  wife,  with  the  two  elder 
children,  went  abroad  in  November  1886,  and  settled 
in  San  Remo  in  a  Hotel-pension,  the  Anglo-Am£ricain, 
close  to  the  railway  station.  I  joined  her  in  January 
1887.  She  improved  very  sensibly,  and  there  seemed 
reason  for  forecasting  that  a  moderately  extended  stay 
might  produce  a  cure,  when  suddenly  the  earthquake  of 
25  February  (Ash  Wednesday)  set  a  veto  on  our  hopes. 
This  earthquake,  as  many  readers  of  my  pages  will 


MY  MARRIAGE  AND  MARRIED  LIFE     435 

remember,  stretched  far  along  the  Riviera — Nice,  Men- 
tone,  San  Remo,  Diano  Marina,  etc. — dealing  death  and 
havoc.  It  was  towards  half-past  five  in  the  morning 
that  my  wife  and  I  felt  the  shock.  The  bed  heaved  up 
and  down  under  us,  not  unlike  the  rolling  of  a  ship 
from  side  to  side  ;  the  crockery  rattled  and  rattled  ; 
strange  to  say,  when  I  went  to  look  at  the  basin  and 
ewer,  not  a  drop  of  water  had  been  spilled.  My  wife, 
with  her  accustomed  promptitude,  sprang  out  of  bed, 
and  ran  to  rouse  our  daughter  in  an  adjoining  room  ;  I 
did  the  like  for  our  son.  The  earthquake  shock  in  our 
hotel  was  not  a  severe  one  ;  no  one  was  injured,  though 
one  gentleman  got  tumbled  out  of  bed.  After  a  while 
there  was  a  second  slighter  shock  ;  some  of  the  guests 
spoke  of  others  later  on,  but  I  was  not  conscious  of 
them.  The  town  of  San  Remo,  it  is  well  known,  con- 
sists of  a  new  town  and  an  old  ;  the  former  a  modern 
and  sufficiently  commonplace  concoction  of  visitors' 
quarters  and  shops  skirting  the  sea  line  ;  the  latter  rising 
up-hill,  very  old-world  and  quaint,  with  narrow  shadowed 
streets  bridged  by  frequent  arches — as  picturesque  and 
reposeful,  in  its  inconspicuous  way,  as  anything  I  know 
in  Italy.  The  damage  done  to  San  Remo  by  the  earth- 
quake was  not  extremely  noticeable  ;  there  was  no  loss 
of  life,  and  nothing  worth  speaking  of  in  the  way  of 
personal  injury.  Still,  many  of  the  houses  were  jogged 
and  cracked  ;  and  this  was  soon  afterwards  made  the 
excuse  or  the  pretext  for  interfering  with,  and  partially 
spoiling,  the  interesting  old  town,  whose  solid  and  well- 
weathered  structures  were  probably  much  less  in  need 
of  repair  than  the  gimcrack  erections  haunted  by  inter- 
national visitors.  Although  San  Remo  itself  fared 
tolerably  well,  such  was  far  from  being  the  case  in  its 


436        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

near  neighbourhood.  The  village  of  Bajardo,  some  few- 
miles  away  in  the  hills,  was  the  scene  of  a  greater  and 
more  instant  loss  of  life  than  (I  believe)  any  other  place 
within  the  earthquake's  circuit.  In  the  earliest  morning 
of  that  Ash  Wednesday  the  villagers  had  thronged  the 
church  to  receive  the  ashes  ;  the  church  crashed  down 
upon  them  and  killed  two  hundred — that  was  about  the 
number  reported. 

Be  it  said  to  the  credit  of  the  denizens  of  the  Hotel- 
pension  Anglo-Americain,  they  all  seemed  to  take  their 
seismic  experience  cool,  without  flurry  or  blenching. 
We  were  down  to  breakfast,  and  exchanged  some  details 
of  our  respective  adventures,  which  were  all  of  nearly 
the  same  complexion.  Then  Signer  Milano,  the  hotel- 
keeper,  warned  us  that  it  would  be  prudent  to  abandon 
the  house  itself,  and  spend  the  day  in  its  sufficiently 
spacious  and  pleasant  garden.  San  Remo  in  February 
is  far  from  a  paradise  of  warmth — along  with  brilliant 
sunshine,  the  wind  is  at  times  cutting  in  the  extreme. 
That  day  however  was  bright,  mild,  and  singularly 
serene  ;  Nature  seemed  to  have  lulled  herself  into 
a  dreamless  sleep  after  the  one  spasmodic  effort,  and 
there  was  scarcely  a  breath  of  air  stirring.  Ladies  sat 
out  knitting  or  reading  ;  men  sauntered  about  smoking 
or  chatting.  At  night  we  slept  in  a  tent,  with  some 
fires  lit  in  it  here  and  there  :  a  trying  ordeal  for  my 
wife  in  her  risky  state  of  health,  and  also  for  our  son, 
who  was  rather  troublesomely  indisposed  with  a  feverish 
cold.  No  particular  harm  however  ensued  to  either  of 
them.  On  the  following  night  we  were  indoors,  but  only 
on  the  ground-floor.  The  great  majority  of  the  population 
of  San  Remo,  1  understood,  quitted  their  houses  for  a  day 
or  two,  and  camped  out  on  the  sea-strand  and  esplanade. 


MY  MARRIAGE  AND  MARRIED  LIFE     437 

I  have  heard  it  reported  that  persons  who  pass  through 
an  earthquake  seldom  throw  off  the  impression  of  it 
entirely :  a  certain  tremor  continues  lurking  in  the 
nerves,  and  re-asserts  itself  from  time  to  time  at  any 
actual  or  apprehended  recurrence  of  any  such  shock. 
With  myself,  and  also  with  my  son,  this  did  not  hold 
good  :  we  remained,  as  scatheless,  so  also  impassive 
enough.  My  daughter  however  was  somewhat  nervous ; 
and  my  wife  soon  decided  that  she  could  stand  San 
Remo  no  longer.  I  urged  her  to  think  well  of  it  before 
deserting  a  place  which  was  obviously  doing  good  to  her 
much-endangered  health,  through  the  mere  dread  of  a 
•contingency  which  might  probably  not  be  repeated — and 
as  a  fact  it  was  not  repeated,  for  no  further  earthquaking 
ensued.  I  failed  to  persuade  her,  and  on  the  third 
-or  fourth  day  after  the  cataclysm  we  left  San  Remo,  and 
travelled  straight  on  to  Dijon.  Most  or  all  of  the  other 
guests  at  the  hotel  departed.  I  gathered  that  the 
premises  had  to  be  shut  up  for  the  season,  and  they 
re-opened  little  or  not  at  all,  and  were  pretty  soon 
demolished.  At  Dijon,  a  city  which  I  already  knew 
tolerably  well,  I  stayed  some  days,  and  then  returned  to 
my  work  at  Somerset  House  ;  my  wife  and  children  re- 
mained behind  for  several  weeks,  quartered  at  an  excellent 
hotel,  La  Cloche.  A  great  number  of  people,  seeking 
refuge  from  the  earthquake-districts,  came  to  the  same 
hotel  :  some  of  them  from  our  old  hotel  in  San  Remo. 
One  of  these  was  a  pleasant  young  lady,  Miss  Burrows 
(now  Mrs.  Martin),  whom  I  had  had  the  surprise 
of  discovering,  in  San  Rerno,  to  be  a  family  connexion 
of  my  own  on  my  mother's  side. 

In  the  late  autumn  of  1888  my  wife,  still  in  quest  of 
health,  again  went  abroad,  accompanied  by  all  our  four 


438        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

children.  This  was  after  they  had  spent  two  or  three 
months  at  Worthing  ;  where  we  had  an  excessively  bad 
time  of  it,  what  between  a  dangerous  attack  of  pneu- 
monia which  befell  our  eldest  daughter  Olivia,  and  a  car- 
buncle in  the  nape  of  the  neck  which  tortured  my  wife. 
They  went  to  Pau,  a  town  remarkable  for  stillness  of 
atmosphere,  and  glorified  by  the  Pyrennean  panorama. 
The  atmospheric  conditions  suited  my  wife,  but  after  a 
while  had  a  lowering  effect,  and  she  was  even  less  fit  than 
usual  for  any  physical  exertion.  I  was  there  for  two  or 
three  weeks  in  December,  including  Christmas  day.. 
After  passing  Bordeaux  on  the  journey,  I  found  myself  in 
fine  and  genial  sunshine,  which  persisted  with  little  alter- 
ation throughout  my  stay,  and  the  trees  in  and  about 
Pau  still  made  a  goodly  show  of  leafage.  We  had  the 
satisfaction  of  renewing  there  our  acquaintance  with  an 
old  friend  of  my  wife's  girlhood,  Miss  Fanny  Seddon^, 
who  was  for  a  good  while  settled  in  the  town.  We  also 
made  acquaintance  in  our  hotel  with  two  ladies,  Mrs. 
and  Miss  Bene,  who  continued  on  very  intimate  terms 
with  us  for  three  or  four  years  ensuing,  until  they  went 
to  reside  away  from  London.  These  ladies,  who  were 
pre-eminently  sociable  and  obliging,  had  travelled  in 
Spain  and  elsewhere.  Miss  Bene  had  acquired  a  sound 
practical  knowledge  of  Spanish,  and  very  soon  set  to  at 
coaching  up  Olivia  in  the  language. 

Just  as  the  year  1888  was  expiring  my  wife  felt 
inclined  to  quit  Pau.  Mrs.  Bene,  who  had  moved  on  to 
Biarritz,  found  there  lodgings  for  her  and  the  children 
— commodious  and  inexpensive  lodgings  in  about  the 
most  picturesque  locality  of  the  town  (i  Rue  de  la 
Falaise),  on  a  beetling  cliff  which  commands  a  noble 
view  of  the  mighty  Atlantic — a  sea-spectacle  far  sur- 


MY  MARRIAGE  AND  MARRIED  LIFE     439 

passing  anything  that  we  had  yet  seen.  The  people  of 
the  house  were  all  Basques,  and  the  cheerful  hard- 
working little  servant-girl  Catherine  could  only  express 
herself  clumsily  in  French.  This  lodging,  with  the 
performances  of  the  landlady  Madame  Serre  and  her 
assistants,  proved  very  much  to  my  wife's  taste  ;  unfor- 
tunately the  weather  was  mostly  broken,  sometimes 
squally.  It  was  the  same  season  when  Queen  Victoria 
made  a  sojourn  at  Biarritz  :  she  became  a  familiar  sight 
to  the  inhabitants,  driven  about  in  her  donkey-chaise. 
Catherine  went  to  look  at  her,  and  was  both  surprised 
and  disappointed  to  behold  a  quiet,  plump  old  lady  who 
was  not  wearing  a  crown,  and  who  carried  a  parasol  in 
lieu  of  a  sceptre.  Having  returned  from  Pau  to  London 
at  the  end  of  1888,  and  being  soon  afterwards  much  and 
sorrowfully  occupied  in  consequence  of  the  death  in 
January  of  Francis  Hueffer,  I  could  not  get  away  until 
some  moderate  while  following  the  settlement  of  the 
family  in  Biarritz  :  I  did  then  depart,  and  joined  them 
for  several  weeks  of  the  spring.  This  is  the  only  time 
when  I  got  a  little  into  Spain, — a  very  little,  my  son  and 
I  crossing  the  Franco-Spanish  frontier  by  rail  to  San 
Sebastian.  My  wife  and  Olivia  were  also  there  after  I 
had  made  my  way  back  to  London. 

As  I  am  here  so  much  and  so  painfully  concerned 
with  questions  of  health,  I  will  include  a  few  words 
about  my  own.  In  a  general  way  I  may  thankfully  say 
that  I  have  always  been  a  healthy  man  :  but  at  the  end 
of  1878  I  was  assailed  by  gout,  which  has  returned 
several  times  since  then,  varied  by  sciatica  and  rheuma- 
tism. Yet  these  maladies  have,  up  to  the  present 
writing,  proceeded  much  less  far,  and  given  me  much 
less  pain,  than  I  had  expected  when  I  was  first  subject  to 


440        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

them.     Colchicum   for  gout,  and  an  electric  bath  for 
rheumatism,  have  stood  me  in  good  stead. 

In  1890  my  wife  was  greatly  bent  upon  quitting  our 
house  in  Endsleigh  Gardens,  and  moving  to  some 
locality  at  a  higher  elevation,  with  freer  and  purer  air. 
The  announcement  of  her  wish  came  to  me  just  when 
I  should  have  best  liked  to  stay  on  in  Endsleigh 
Gardens  ;  for  Charlotte  Polidori,  who  held  the  lease 
of  the  house,  had  died  in  January  of  that  year,  be- 
queathing the  lease  to  me — so  that  we  could  now  live 
there  rent-free.  Moreover,  my  stationary  habits  of  life 
indisposed  me  for  any  removal  whatever,  with  all  the 
accompanying  incertitudes,  upset,  and  trouble.  How- 
ever, my  wife's  preference,  being  based  upon  the  para- 
mount consideration  of  her  state  of  health,  admitted 
of  no  cavilling,  so  I  prepared  to  flit.  Madox  Brown  was 
already  resettled  in  London,  at  No.  i  St.  Edmund's 
Terrace — a  line  of  street  raised  well  above  the  level 
of  Regent's  Park,  and  not  far  below  the  summit  of  the 
closely  adjoining  Primrose  Hill.  It  is  not  a  cloud-capt 
summit,  but  in  London  it  counts  as  the  nearest  approach 
to  a  hill  that  we  have  to  show.  Not  unnaturally,  my 
wife's  thoughts  turned  to  this  same  St.  Edmund's 
Terrace.  She  first  entered  into  an  arrangement  for 
tenanting  No.  5  ;  but  it  turned  out  that  our  friends  the 
Garnetts  were  soon  to  vacate  No.  3,  Dr.  Garnett  having 
been  promoted  to  the  post  of  Keeper  of  the  Printed 
Books  in  the  British  Museum,  which  entailed  his  living 
on  the  Museum  premises.  No.  5  was  therefore  given 
up,  and  my  wife  made  a  bargain  with  a  body  named  the 
Nineteenth  Century  Building  Society,  under  which  No.  3, 
after  payment  of  a  certain  number  of  years'  rent,  was 
to  become  her  own  leasehold.  I  paid  her  the  rent  of  the 


MY  MARRIAGE  AND  MARRIED  LIFE     441 

house,  she  paid  it  over  to  the  Society,  and,  just  towards 
the  close  of  her  life,  the  lease  was  hers,  or  about  to 
be  hers.  No.  3  St.  Edmund's  Terrace  is  a  somewhat 
smaller  edifice  than  No.  5  Endsleigh  Gardens,  and 
somewhat  less  well  built ;  and,  though  its  close  proximity 
to  Regent's  Park  and  the  Primrose  Hill  enclosure  gives  it 
a  vast  superiority  in  the  way  of  open  space  and  pleasur- 
able walks,  and  also  of  noiseless  quiet  (for  there  is 
scarcely  any  of  the  London  rattling  and  rumbling),  the 
actual  outlook  from  the  front  windows  is  the  less  good 
of  the  two.  The  building  faces  the  then  West  Middlesex 
Waterworks,  with  a  plentiful  supply  of  unsightly  sheds 
and  unsightlier  water-pipes.  To  me  there  was  the 
further  disadvantage  that  the  distance  from  Somerset 
House  was  about  doubled.  In  this  Primrose  Hill 
locality  my  old  friend  the  London  fog  (for  which  I  have 
always  had  a  sneaking  kindness)  is  considerably  less 
demonstrative  than  at  a  lower  level  and  in  closer  en- 
vironments :  many  times  when  there  has  been  a  dense 
fog  in  London  streets,  and  even  in  Regent's  Park, 
there  has  only  been  a  whitish  mist  in  St.  Edmund's 
Terrace. 

While  the  removal  was  pending,  and  was  engaging 
the  energies  and  the  capital  business  aptitudes  of  my 
wife,  we  took  our  summer  holiday  abroad,  in  the  noble 
old  city  of  Bruges  :  tolerably  well  known  to  me,  and  to 
her  not  unknown.  All  our  children  accompanied  us. 
Towards  this  time  there  was  something  of  a  lull  in  my 
wife's  illness,  and  we  all  got  a  deal  of  enjoyment  out  of 
this  still  comparatively  unspoiled  haunt  of  Flemish 
medievalism — and  we  discerned  Bruges  to  be  not  so 
totally  stagnant  in  the  vital  activities  of  our  own  day  as 
some  people  are  pleased  to  allege.  We  did  not  move 

II. L 


442        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

much  out  of  the  city,  yet  we  went  some  few  miles 
across  the  border  into  Holland.  Soon  after  returning 
to  London  came  Michaelmas  Day,  and  we  were  due 
to  quit  Endsleigh  Gardens  for  St.  Edmund's  Terrace. 
Some  obstacle  ensued,  and  some  repairs  in  the  old 
house  had  to  be  provided  for,  and  for  a  few  weeks 
we  all  housed  with  Christina  in  Torrington  Square. 
Christina  was  delighted  to  have  us  all  as  a  family  party, 
and  made  our  stay  a  very  cheerful  one,  steeped  in  a 
genuine  sense  of  home.  The  only  then  surviving 
relative  with  her  was  Eliza  Polidori,  who  had  for  some 
while  been  confined  to  her  bed  weak  in  body  and  not 
less  so  in  mind. 

Early  in  October  1890  we  were  domiciled  in  St. 
Edmund's  Terrace,  and  Endsleigh  Gardens,  which  I 
had  inhabited  since  1867,  knew  us  no  more.  For  some 
months  the  change  of  residence  seemed  beneficial  to  my 
wife,  and  the  facilities  for  constant  intercourse  with  her 
father  were  a  satisfaction  to  her.  In  that  same  month, 
nth  October,  his  wife  died  :  she  had  been  severely  ill  with 
a  form  of  paralysis  since  the  preceding  April.  I  find  it 
recorded  that  she  was  born  in  May  1835,  in  which  case 
she  expired  in  her  fifty-sixth  year  ;  but  it  seems  to  me 
that  she  must  have  been  born  some  three  years  earlier 
than  this.  In  any  case,  she  preserved  to  the  last  a  very 
fair  share  of  her  original  good  looks. 

Soon  it  became  too  evident  that  Lucy's  malady, 
though  it  might  undergo  some  temporary  lull,  was  not 
to  be  cured.  In  1891  we  went  to  Oxford,  where  our 
two  elder  children  followed  the  University  Extension 
course  ;  and  my  wife  and  children,  after  I  had  returned 
to  London,  went  on  for  some  days  to  Stratford-on- 
Avon,  Warwick,  and  Birmingham.  At  the  last-named 


MY  MARRIAGE  AND  MARRIED  LIFE     445 

town  an  exhibition  of  paintings,  chiefly  of  the  Prae- 
raphaelite  type,  was  then  being  held,  and  a  Beata  Beatrix 
by  Dante  Rossetti,  completed  after  his  death  by  Madox 
Brown,  had  recently  been  purchased  for  the  Municipal 
Gallery.  The  curator  of  Shakespear's  birth-house  at 
Stratford  was  at  this  period  Mr.  Joseph  Skipsey,  the 
coal-miner  poet.  He  had  procured  the  berth  chiefly 
through  the  influence  of  Dr.  Furnivall,  who  had  acted 
(for  he  was  not  previously  acquainted  with  Skipsey  or 
his  claims)  upon  my  recommendation.  I  at  least  under- 
stood so  at  the  time  :  since  Skipsey's  death  (September 
1903)  I  have  seen  it  stated  that  Mr.  John  Morley  and 
Dr.  Spence  Watson  had  been  his  most  influential  sup- 
porters.1 I  had  known  something  of  Mr.  Skipsey — 
who  was  "every  inch  a  man,"  as  well  as  remarkably 
capable  in  his  own  line  of  verse — for  some  years,  and 
had  met  him  in  person  in  1881,  and  indeed  earlier. 
My  wife  saw  him  at  Stratford,  and  conceived  a  very 
high  regard  for  him.  Not  long  afterwards  he  had  to 
resign  the  curatorship,  owing  chiefly  to  the  failure  of 
Mrs.  Skipsey's  health.  In  1892  we  passed  our  vacation 
at  Malvern. 

The  change  in  my  wife's  illness,  from  bronchial  pneu- 
monia to  an  incipient  form  of  phthisis,  was  gradual  and 
insidious.  I  could  hardly  define  when  it  began,  but  it 
must  have  been  somewhat  advanced  before  1892  neared 


1  I  have  also  seen  since  Skipsey's  death  in  a  newspaper  statement  : 
"Some  remarks  in  a  biography  of  Rossetti,  in  relation  to  Rossetti's 
friendship  for  himself,  which  he  construed  as  being  depreciative,  once 
sent  Skipsey  to  bed  for  some  days."  I  do  not  understand  what  is  here 
referred  to  :  so  far  as  Rossetti  himself  is  concerned,  all  his  remarks  about 
Skipsey  seem  to  me  to  be  laudatory  in  a  full  if  not^even  an  extreme 
degree. 


444        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

its  close.  Our  regular  medical  adviser,  ever  since  the 
middle  of  1 874,  was  Dr.  William  Gill,  of  Russell  Square, 
first  specially  recommended  to  me  by  Sir  William  Jenner. 
We  had  the  best  reason  for  feeling  confidence  in  Dr.  Gill  as 
a  professional  man,  and  he  became  besides  a  most  pleasant 
and  kindly  friend.  At  times  too,  with  Dr.  Gill's  cogniz- 
ance, my  wife  consulted  other  leading  physicians — Dr. 
Wilson  Fox,  Dr.  Frederick  Roberts,  Sir  John  Williams. 
But  the  disease  pursued  its  course  with  inexorable  persist- 
ence. A  very  distressing  accompaniment  of  it  was  brain- 
exhaustion  (as  I  hear  this  called).  It  did  not  in  any  way 
weaken  my  wife's  readiness  or  keenness  of  perception, 
or  her  power  of  estimating  things  by  an  intellectual 
standard  ;  but  it  gave  a  swerve  to  her  feelings,  and  to 
her  construction  of  persons  and  occurrences,  and  made 
her  look  at  all  sorts  of  matters  with  a  resentful  bias. 
Mentally,  it  was  the  same  kind  of  thing  as  if  she  had 
gazed  with  the  physical  eyes  through  blackened  spectacles. 
This  change  of  feeling  seemed  to  augment  suddenly 
early  in  November  1892,  and  the  months  which  ensued 
are  full  of  painful  memories  to  me  :  I  charge  them  to 
the  malady,  and  not  to  herself.  Soon  after  returning  to 
London  from  Boscombe  she  had  a  frightful  attack  of 
illness  which  for  several  days  kept  her  hovering  between 
life  and  death.  This  was  the  first  time  that  she  brought 
up  blood  to  a  serious  extent ;  there  had  however  been 
two  or  three  previous  instances  when  a  symptom — hardly 
more  than  a  symptom — of  the  same  trouble  had  appeared, 
leading  on  to  extreme  weakness.  During  these  years, 
following  her  return  from  Biarritz  in  1889,  I  was  not 
sparing  in  my  suggestions  that  she  ought  once  more  to 
go  abroad  ;  but  she  appeared  very  reluctant  to  make  the 
effort,  and  more  than  a  certain  amount  of  urgency  on  my 


MY  MARRIAGE  AND  MARRIED  LIFE    445- 

part  seemed  inexpedient.  At  last,  at  the  close  of  the 
summer  of  1893,  and  after  recovering  from  the  first 
shock  of  the  attack  in  the  spring,  she  made  up  her  mind 
to  go.  She,  with  our  three  daughters,  left  London  on 
the  jrd  of  October.  She  saw  England  no  more. 


XXVII 
OUR   CHILDREN 

TX7"E  had  five  children  :  Olivia  Frances  Madox  (this 
last  name  was  given  to  every  one  of  the  five), 
born  in  September  1875  ;  Gabriel  Arthur,  February 
1877  >  Helen  Maria,  November  1879  ;  Mary  Elizabeth 
and  Michael  Ford  (twins),  April  1881.  Olivia's  birth 
was  celebrated  by  Swinburne  in  a  beautiful  ode  of  some 
length,  and  allusions  to  others  of  the  children  are  to  be 
found  in  his  writings  :  welcomed  by  us  with  beseeming 
gratitude  to  so  illustrious  and  warm  a  friend.  I  have 
already  borne  my  testimony,  and  it  could  not  be  too 
strongly  expressed,  to  Lucy's  intense  devotion  to  her 
children  ;  and  the  delight  which  she  took  in  them — their 
infant  wiles  and  their  gradually  expanding  minds — was 
no  less  intense.  She  nursed  them  all  :  except  only 
Arthur  (he  was  always  so  called,  the  name  of  Gabriel 
being  preoccupied  by  my  brother),  who,  at  an  early 
period  of  infancy,  was  pronounced  by  our  doctor  to  be 
in  need  of  a  different  treatment.  I  could  not  do  justice 
to  my  own  feelings  if  I  did  not  here  say  something 
about  my  children  :  a  reader  who  opines  that  paternity 
looms  too  large  in  my  account  of  them  can  consult  his 
own  taste  by  skipping  the  present  section. 

We  did  not  have  the  children  baptized,  for  neither  my 
wife  nor  I  attached  any  importance,  whether  spiritual  or 

446 


OUR   CHILDREN  447 

temporal,  to  the  baptismal  ceremony,  and  to  conform  to 
mere  custom  because  custom  it  is  was  not  in  our  line. 

As  to  the  general  training  of  the  four  children  (I 
must  omit  Michael  who  died  in  infancy)  let  me  say  thus 
much.  We  did  not  bring  them  up  in  the  Christian  or 
in  any  defined  religion  ;  but  made  them  understand  that 
they  ought  to  acquaint  themselves  with  the  main  docu- 
ments and  rudimentary  principles  of  Christianity,  think 
seriously  over  them,  and,  if  convinced,  adopt  them, 
without  minding  whether  their  parents  entertained  the 
like  views  or  not.  The  children  have  more  or  less  acted 
upon  these  precepts  ;  they  understand  what  is  the  sub- 
stance of  the  national  religion,  but  it  has  not  become 
their  religion.  Rightly  or  wrongly,  we  thought  the 
training  of  character  a  more  essential  matter  for  our 
children  than  the  fashioning  of  their  minds  to  any  form 
of  speculative  belief,  affirmative  or  negative  ;  this  we 
regarded  as  being  their  own  affair  when  they  should  be 
qualified  to  judge  for  themselves.  We  sought  to  keep 
steadily  before  their  thoughts  the  rule  of  right — prin- 
cipally justice,  kindness,  truth,  helpfulness,  honour  of 
the  high  things  in  intellect  and  achievement,  and  (on 
their  own  small  part)  an  endeavour  to  attend  seriously  to 
serious  matters,  and  be  prepared  in  the  long  run  to  take 
their  share  gallantly  in  the  work  of  the  world.  Neither 
of  us  "  preached  "  to  the  children,  or  endeavoured  to 
interfere  with  every  harmless  outburst  of  their  childish- 
ness ;  we  kept  them  very  much  in  our  company,  and 
my  wife  enjoyed  the  privilege  due  to  a  good  mother — 
that  of  impressing  them  by  a  few  simple  words  spoken 
in  season.  I  will  not  pretend  to  determine  how  far  they 
have  responded  to  these  counsels  ;  but  will  only  say — 
they  are  now  all  grown  up,  and  I  consider  myself  to  be 


448        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

happy  in  my  children.  We  left  them  to  develop  sever- 
ally in  character  and  turn  of  mind  very  much  according 
to  the  innate  bias  of  each,  not  trying  to  dictate  to  them 
with  any  imperative  strictness,  and  not  having  recourse 
to  manual  correction  ;  to  make  them  feel  constantly  that 
they  were  cared  for  and  loved,  and  their  future  kept 
well  in  view,  was  the  chief  incentive  applied  to  their 
dawning  faculties.  They  have  grown  up  in  mutual 
affection  and  harmony,  but  certainly  without  any  mono- 
tonous sameness  of  disposition — a  sameness  which  I 
should  regard  as  equally  sterile  and  tedious. 

Of  ordinary  schooling  my  children  have  had  extremely 
little — Olivia  and  Helen  none.  Arthur,  and  likewise 
Mary,  attended  some  classes,  chiefly  at  the  Polytechnic 
Institution  ;  neither  of  them  was  in  anything  resembling 
a  boarding-school.  Olivia  and  Arthur  had  also  a  certain 
amount  of  private  tutoring  at  home.  I  myself,  though 
by  no  means  enamoured  of  boarding-schools,  thought 
at  more  than  one  juncture  that  it  would  be  best  to  send 
our  son  to  one  ;  to  this  my  wife  was  opposed,  pleading 
that  he  was  too  sensitive  (though  I  do  not  see  that  he 
was  sensitive  in  any  exceptional  degree),  and  that  it  would 
do  him  more  harm  than  good  ;  and  I  allowed  her  pre- 
ference to  prevail.  She  did  a  great  deal,  with  careful 
method  and  steadfast  persistency,  in  personally  instruct- 
ing all  the  four  ;  and  followed  a  plan  which  I  consider 
truly  sensible — that  of  bringing  into  the  house,  from  an 
early  date,  a  foreign  nursery  governess.  There  were 
two  such  governesses — a  French  lady  of  the  middle 
class,  and  a  German  ;  both  of  them  young,  agreeable, 
fine-looking  women.  We  liked  them  both,  more  espe- 
cially the  German,  who,  in  any  case  of  illness  in  the 
family,  was  most  unsparing  in  her  kindly  attentions,  and 


OUR   CHILDREN  449 

had  a  large  fund  of  household  knowledge.  I  call 
Fraiilein  Heimann  a  German,  as  she  is  an  Alsatian,  and 
we  were  then  more  in  want  of  German  than  of  French 
for  the  children  to  learn  and  talk  :  in  heart  however  she 
was  thoroughly  and  undisguisedly  French,  and  of  course 
she  was  as  familiar  with  the  French  as  with  the  German 
language.  My  wife  (like  myself)  knew  and  talked 
French,  and  (much  better  than  myself)  German  ;  so, 
between  their  governesses  and  their  parents,  our  children, 
from  a  very  early  age,  could  say  anything  they  wanted 
in  either  tongue,  and  could  read  currently  in  either. 
This  is  a  precious  advantage  indeed  for  the  after  years. 
Still  more  precious  perhaps  is  that  immunity  from  sense- 
less prejudices,  and  from  the  pettinesses  of  national 
self-opinion,  which  comes  of  associating  from  the  first 
with  persons  of  a  different  race  ;  under  such  conditions, 
the  British  Lion  continues  to  be  a  more  than  decorous 
heraldic  beast,  but  the  British  Unicorn  (if  I  may  allow  my- 
self the  expression)  gets  notice  to  quit, — he  is  chased,  in 
the  words  of  the  old  catch,  "  all  round  about  the  town." 
At  the  present  day  all  my  children  know  French  and 
Italian  well,  and  have  a  firm  foundation  in  German, 
though  they  may  have  become  rusty  in  this  ;  in  one  or 
more  of  them  there  is  a  fair  proficiency  in  Greek,  Latin, 
and  Spanish  ;  and  some  inkling  of  Russian,  Arabic,  and 
Yiddish.  In  point  of  travel  also,  with  the  enlargement 
of  mind  and  experience  which  comes  of  that,  they  have 
done  not  amiss.  Since  1883,  when  the  two  elder  children 
were  in  Calais,  Olivia  has  lived  in  Florence  and  in  Rome, 
and  has  seen  many  other  parts  of  Italy,  and  of  Norway 
as  well.  Arthur  has  been  in  several  of  the  same  places, 
in  the  United  States,  and  in  Belgium,  Holland,  Sweden, 
etc.  Helen  has  made  the  voyage  to  Australia  and  back, 


450        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

by  the  Cape  Town  and  then  the  Suez  route,  and  has 
spent  some  months  in  Davos  Platz  and  in  Cairo.  Mary 
has  not  gone  on  such  distant  expeditions  as  Arthur  and 
Helen,  but  has  shared  in  the  French,  Italian,  Belgian, 
and  Dutch  trips,  and  has  (with  myself)  been  on  the 
steamer-tour  round  Great  Britain  up  to  Orkney,  and  she 
was  recently  (1905)  in  Algeria.  All  this  is  an  experience 
very  different  from  that  of  their  father,  who  had  never 
crossed  the  British  Channel  until  he  was  getting  on 
towards  twenty-four. 

Crescit  eundo.  The  love  of  freedom  which  in  my 
father  took  its  course  towards  constitutional  monarchy, 
and  in  myself  towards  theoretic  republicanism,  launched 
my  children  upon  the  tumultuous  waters  of  anarchism  : 
social  democracy  had  been  tried  and  found  wanting. 
I  except  the  youngest  girl,  Mary,  though  she  also  might 
have  "  anarchized,"  if  the  impulse  had  continued  for 
a  year  or  two  longer  with  her  three  seniors.  I  might 
have  more  to  say  on  this  subject,  were  it  not  that  in 
1903  a  book  was  issued  entitled  A  Girl  among  the 
Anarchists,  by  Isabel  Meredith.  This  book  is  in  fact 
written  by  my  daughters  Olivia  and  Helen  ;  and  it 
gives,  with  fancy-names  and  some  modification  of  details, 
a  genuine  account  of  their  experiences.  Mr.  Morley 
Roberts,  whom  we  have  the  pleasure  of  knowing, 
obliged  my  daughters  by  writing  a  preface. 

It  never  entered  into  the  head  of  my  wife  or  of  my- 
self to  offer  pap  to  our  children  as  their  mental  pabulum ; 
to  dose  them  with  the  goody-goody  in  the  way  of  books  ; 
to  tie  their  thoughts  down  to  mere  puerilities  which, 
even  if  not  noxious  in  the  first  instance,  would  demand 
summary  rejection  at  the  end  of  some  few  years  or 
months.  From  the  first  they  were  brought  up  to  like  good 


OUR   CHILDREN  451 

things  :  I  don't  mean  to  like  things  which  are  good  for 
adults  and  unadapted  for  children,  but  such  as  are  good 
for  children,  and  continue  to  be  good  when  the  period 
of  mere  childhood  has  passed.  The  Arabian  Nights, 
Robinson  Crusoe,  or  Puss  in  Boots  and  Cinderella,  are  good 
things  of  this  kind. 

I  myself  know  comparatively  little  of  the  Anarchists. 
I  had  however  a  great  regard  and  liking  for  Stepniak, 
and  retain  the  like  for  Kropotkin,  and  for  the  memory 
(though  I  never  spoke  to  her)  of  Louise  Michel.  The 
susceptible  British  reader  should  not  suppose  that  the 
exploding  of  dynamite  is  the  quintessence  of  anarchism ; 
any  more  than  the  igniting  of  pitch-caps  upon  the  heads 
of  Irish  insurgents  in  1798  was  the  quintessence  of 
British  militarism  in  that  year.  Dynamite  has  been 
exploded  by  anarchists,  and  pitch-caps  have  been  ignited 
by  soldiers  ;  these  were  incidents,  and  were  surely  (in 
the  parlance  of  the  Transvaal-war  days)  very  "regrettable 
incidents  " :  but  they  were  not  the  gist  of  the  anarchist 
nor  of  the  military  raison  d'etre.  The  theory  of  anar- 
'chism  is  the  theory  of  non-government,  which  is  the 
same  thing  (under  a  different  name)  as  self-government. 
If,  instead  of  saying  "  I  advocate  anarchism,"  the  anarchist 
were  to  say  "  I  advocate  self-government,"  the  normal 
taxpayer  and  ratepayer  might  be  very  apt  to  respond, 
"  Well,  so  do  I."  True,  the  anarchist  says  this  in  an 
extreme  sense,  extremer  than  that  of  the  ratepayer  ;  and 
yet  the  latter,  if  he  is  a  Nonconformist  of  our  days 
flicked  by  a  Government  Education  Bill,  goes  some  way 
along  with  the  anarchist,  and  vows  "  Then  I  shan't  pay 
my  rates."  The  anarchist  says  essentially,  "  I  don't 
want  you,  A,  to  set  yourself  up  as  governing  me,  B  ; 
J  want  to  govern  myself,  and,  being  a  decent  fellow 


452        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

(if  I  happen  to  be  one),  I  mean  to  govern  myself 
properly.  You,  A,  have  a  handsome  apparatus  of 
policemen,  judges,  etc.,  with  the  hangman  bringing 
up  the  rear  of  the  procession  ;  but  I  don't  want  to  be 
concerned  with  any  of  them,  nor  that  they  should  be 
concerned  with  me."  So  far  the  anarchist ;  but  I,  who 
never  was  an  anarchist,  can  see  that  there  is  a  very 
awkward  flaw  in  his  demand — namely,  that  while  anar- 
chist B  may  be  a  decent  fellow,  anarchist  or  non- 
anarchist  C  may  be  an  intolerable  scoundrel,  for  whom 
the  policeman  and  the  judge  are  highly  requisite,  and 
even  Jack  Ketch  not  an  unquestioned  superfluity.  In 
fact,  it  looks  as  if  anarchism,  so  far  from  being  a 
grovelling  degradation,  were  an  ideal,  and  a  far-shining 
ideal  ;  but  that  our  poor  world  is  remote  from  having 
yet  attained  to  the  height  where  such  an  ideal  could  be 
put  in  practice.  If  we  could  all  be  anarchists  with  en- 
durable safety,  we  should  all  be  better  men  than  we  are. 
Naturally  my  wife  and  I  had  thought  and  talked 
seriously,  from  time  to  time,  about  the  rather  over- 
strained ideas  which  dominated  our  children,  not  only 
by  way  of  speculation  but  in  actual  performance.  My 
wife  had  highly  independent  opinions  of  her  own,  tend- 
ing towards  socialism,  though  not  committed  to  any 
precise  dogmas  of  that  movement.  In  this  I  was  in 
accord  with  her.  She  considered  that  on  the  whole  it 
would  be  a  pity  to  chill  our  youngsters  in  their  generous 
enthusiasms  ;  and  that  some  modicum  of  restraining 
influence  and  sympathetic  guidance  would  be  more  bene- 
ficial than  any  coercive  interposition.  I  was  somewhat 
less  inclined  than  she  to  allow  the  children  to  go  to  the 
end  of  their  tether  :  still,  I  entered  into  her  general 
view,  and  kept  my  interferences  within  very  narrow 


OUR   CHILDREN  453 

limits.  The  boys  and  girls  of  one  generation  are,  one 
must  always  remember,  the  men  and  women  of  the  next 
generation  ;  according  to  their  own  innate  perceptions 
and  faculties,  their  own  authentic  sympathies  and  antipa- 
thies, they  have  to  grow  up,  and  act  upon  the  stage  of 
the  world.  If  they  merely  pretend  to  hold  by  certain 
notions,  it  will  be  so  much  the  worse  for  themselves  and 
for  others.  The  parents,  while  it  is  their  obvious  duty 
to  regulate  the  children,  should  not,  in  my  opinion, 
wrest  them  aside,  attempting  to  alter  their  identities  ; 
the  attempt  will  probably  fail,  and  we  shall  have  meagre 
and  stunted  hybrid  growths,  instead  of  natural  and 
naturally  developed  growths.  The  plan  which  we 
followed  with  our  children  has  succeeded  ;  for  some 
years  past  the  excesses  and  fantasticalities  of  anarchism 
have  shredded  away  from  them,  while  they  remain  free- 
minded,  open  to  new  impressions,  and  exempt  from 
class-prejudices. 

I  will  subjoin  some  brief  account  of  my  children,  one 
by  one,  as  they  stand  at  the  date  of  this  present  writing, 
November  1902. 

A  youngish  Italian  anarchist  refugee,  Antonio  Agresti 
of  Florence,  whom  Olivia  saw  frequently  in  London, 
fell  in  love  with  her,  and  she  favoured  his  suit.  He  is 
the  son  of  a  scientific  chemist,  and  had  not,  so  far  as  I 
know,  performed  any  anarchistic  feat  more  grim  than 
that  of  signing,  along  with  others,  some  protest  against 
a  high-handed  governmental  act,  which  protest  formed 
the  subject  of  a  prosecution  in  Italy.  He  quitted  his 
country,  and  was  condemned  in  default  to  some  length- 
ened term  of  imprisonment.  He  was  unable  to  return 
to  Italy  until  1896  or  '97,  when  an  amnesty  was  pro- 
claimed on  the  occasion  of  some  public  rejoicing.  He 


454        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

then  returned,  having  withdrawn  from  any  active  con- 
cern in  the  anarchist  propaganda  (which  indeed  seems  to 
be  now  very  much  at  a  discount  in  Italy  as  elsewhere), 
and  became  a  clerk  in  a  bank  in  Florence,  as  a  temporary 
expedient  before  he  could  obtain  some  footing  as  a 
literary  man.  In  December  1897  Olivia  was  married 
to  him.  Late  in  1900  they  removed  from  Florence  to 
Rome,  where  they  continue  to  reside.  Agresti  has  acted 
as  editor  of  a  literary  magazine  (La  Boheme,  now 
defunct),  and  has  written  plays  which  have  been  acted, 
a  published  romance  or  two,  a  translation  of  poems  by 
Dante  Rossetti,  a  book  named  La  Filosofa  nella  Letter  a- 
tura  Moderna,  and  other  things.  Olivia  has  been  active 
in  translating- work,  light  journalism,  and  some  original 
writing.  Her  Life  of  Giovanni  Costa,  the  celebrated 
landscape  painter,  with  whom  she  was  intimate  in  Rome, 
came  out  in  London  in  1904. 

Arthur  is  the  only  Rossetti  (within  my  knowledge) 
who  ever  showed  a  scientific  turn.  In  boyhood  he  had 
plenty  of  opportunity  of  reading  poems,  romances, 
histories,  biographies,  etc.,  and  he  showed  an  ample 
appreciation  of  such  work  ;  but  studies  of  chemistry, 
algebra,  and  other  matters  of  science,  engaged  his  chief 
personal  attention  ;  for  a  spell  of  light  reading  he  would 
take  up  the  Differential  Calculus.  He  wanted  to  be  an 
electrical  engineer,  and  was  put  in  the  way  of  pursuing 
that  vocation.  Towards  1896  he  was  placed  as  a  student 
in  the  large  engineering  works  of  Messrs.  Jackson  & 
Co.  of  Salford.  Here  he  became  intimate  with  the 
manager  of  the  firm,  Mr.  J.  Slater  Lewis,  an  excellent 
man  of  very  superior  abilities.  Afterwards,  late  in  1899, 
an  opening  was  found  for  him  in  a  business  in  Bolton 
which  seemed  eligible  though  it  is  not  concerned  with 


OUR   CHILDREN  455 

electricity — the  so-called  "  Lancashire  Stoker  Works  " 
of  Messrs.  Bennis  &  Co.  He  became  the  works-manager 
to  this  firm,  and  has  of  late  passed  into  a  different  posi- 
tion— that  of  scientific  referee,  which  takes  him  a  good 
deal  away  from  Bolton  to  other  parts  of  the  kingdom, 
and  sometimes  abroad.  In  September  1901  he  married 
Dora,  a  daughter  of  Mr.  Slater  Lewis,  who  had  died 
suddenly  not  long  before.  Amiability  and  excellent 
sense  distinguish  my  daughter-in-law,  who  in  October 
1902  made  me  the  grandfather  of  a  boy,  Geoffrey 
William. 

Since  Olivia's  marriage,  Helen  was  at  the  head  of  my 
household.  She  has  published  under  her  own  name  one 
thing  which  excited  some  attention — the  monograph  on 
Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  which  formed  in  1 902  the  Easter 
Annual  of  The  Art  Journal:  it  had  been  preceded  by  a 
briefer  notice  of  Madox  Brown  for  an  exhibition  at 
Whitechapel  in  which  his  works  were  conspicuous.  As 
her  chest  was  weak,  and  her  general  health  not  strong, 
she  received  medical  orders  to  go  to  Davos  Platz  at  the 
beginning  of  1896,  and  to  Australia  at  the  end  of  the 
same  year.  I  accompanied  her  in  each  instance,  and  we 
were  away  ten  months  between  the  two  expeditions. 
Each  of  them  did  her  some  good,  more  especially  the 
second  ;  and  ever  since  her  return  from  Australia  I  have 
been  permitted  to  regard  my  daughter's  condition  of 
health,  actual  and  prospective,  with  less  anxiety  than  for 
many  months  preceding.  From  her  earliest  years  she 
showed  a  certain  unmistakable  aptitude  for  sketching  and 
painting.  I  have  already  referred  (Vol.  I,  p.  279)  to  her 
having  wished  at  one  time — say  1897 — to  study  land- 
scape-painting under  a  Japanese,  if  only  we  could  have 
discovered  such  an  artist  in  London.  When  this  idea 


456        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

proved  impracticable — and  in  my  opinion  it  was  rather 
eccentric  than  absurd — she  meditated  other  projects  of 
study,  such  as  might  fit  her  for  the  ordinary  career  of  a 
painter.  Finally  she  came  to  the  conclusion  that,  as 
first-rate  painters  are  of  the  fewest,  while  to  be  a  full- 
fledged  painter  of  the  third  or  fifth  order  would  be 
mortifying  to  the  ambition  rather  than  contentful,  it 
might  be  better  to  try  a  restricted  form  of  art  wherein 
a  solid  though  minor  success  could  be  reasonably  hoped 
for.  She  selected  miniature-painting,  and  has  studied 
and  practised  this  with  some  diligence.  The  art  is  a 
charming  though  a  limited  one  ;  and  requisite  if  the 
record  of  the  men  and  women  of  a  generation,  on  a 
small  and  delicate  scale,  is  not  to  be  consigned  wholly  to 
photography.  Helen  continued  to  be  my  house-mistress 
up  to  10  December  1903.  She  then,  in  Naples,  married  a 
young  Florentine  Gastone  Angeli,  and  proceeded  with 
him  to  Cairo,  where  he  held  an  appointment  in  the 
Italian  Chamber  of  Commerce.  Gastone  (who  had 
never  anything  to  do  with  anarchism)  spent  some  length 
of  time  in  the  Congo  State  of  King  Leopold,1  and  he 
fought  for  the  Greeks  in  1897,  in  the  legion  commanded 
by  Ricciotti  Garibaldi.  He  was  brother  to  a  distin- 
guished scholar  and  writer,  Diego  Angeli,  author  of  an 
excellent  manual  on  the  Roman  churches,  etc.  This 
gentleman  resides  in  Rome,  married  to  a  Russian  lady. 
Painful  to  record,  Gastone' s  health  got  worse  and  worse, 
and  he  died  in  Rome  in  July  1904.  Helen,  in  September, 

1  I  asked  Gastone  Angeli  whether  the  stories  of  atrocities  by  officials 
to  the  natives  of  the  Congo  are  true.  He  said  that  these  stories  are  cer- 
tainly not  without  foundation,  but  culprits  have  in  several  instances  been 
punished  by  imprisonment,  and  a  sentence  of  imprisonment  in  the  Congo 
is  very  much  like  a  sentence  of  death. 


OUR   CHILDREN  457 

gave  birth  to  a  daughter  named  Imogene  Lucy  Maria  ; 
she  remains  for  the  present  in  Rome,  in  the  same  house 
with  her  sister  Olivia. 

Mary,  with  a  robust  person  and  corresponding  hearti- 
ness of  character,  has  always  done  what  she  found  do- 
able in  the  way  of  gymnastics,  swimming,  boating, 
cycling,  riding,  etc.  She  has  also  studied  some  rather 
abstruse  matters,  such  as  biology,  having  no  little  desire 
to  become  a  doctor  ;  one  or  two  disappointments  ensued, 
and  the  project  has  been  relinquished.  Mary  has  accom- 
plished one  literary  performance.  Being  an  ardent 
Napoleonist  (I  refer  to  thejirst  Napoleon,  and  not  to  the 
third),  she  was  asked  by  Mr.  Charles  Rowley  to  deliver 
to  the  Ancoats  Brotherhood,  in  1901,  a  lecture  on 
Napoleon,  more  especially  in  relation  to  Lord  Rosebery's 
book  on  the  captivity  in  St.  Helena  :  she  complied,  and 
was  well  received  by  the  audience. 

Our  only  other  child  was  Michael,  who  died  in 
January  1883,  before  completing  his  second  year. 

In  concluding  this  section,  I  will  recur  to  the  expedi- 
tions which  I  made  with  my  daughter  Helen,  in  1896-7, 
with  a  view  to  benefiting  her  health. 

Bound  for  Davos  Platz,  we  left  London  on  1 5  January 
1896,  and  spent  a  few  days  in  Paris,  Helen  being 
housed  by  our  affectionate  and  much-loved  friend 
Madame  James  Darmesteter  (now  Madame  Duclaux), 
whom  we  had  known,  as  the  poetess  Mary  Robinson, 
ever  since  1876.  Thence,  by  easy  stages  at  Chaumont, 
Bale,  Zurich,  and  Ragatz,  we  went  on  to  Davos  Platz, 
and  settled  at  the  commodious  and  well-kept  Hotel 
Belvedere.  At  Bale,  in  the  famous  Hotel  des  Trois 
Rois,  I  had  a  vexatious  adventure.  I  was  in  a  room 
with  a  sheeny  white-painted  door  facing  the  bed,  and 

II. — M 


458        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

the  glittering  Rhine  far  below  my  window  kept  up 
a  constant  shifting  shimmer  of  light  upon  the  door. 
I  omitted  to  bolt  the  door,  being  much  addicted  to  the 
happy-go-lucky  method  in  such  matters ;  since  that 
night  I  have  been  not  quite  so  heedless.  I  fell  asleep  ;, 
but  soon  woke  up  with  a  start,  and  had  an  impression 
of  some  person  vanishing  through  the  doorway.  Fixing 
my  gaze  upon  the  door,  however,  and  taking  note  of  the 
play  of  light  upon  its  panels,  I  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  this  must  have  deceived  my  eye,  and  that  no  one 
had  been  there.  I  composed  myself  to  sleep  again  ;  but 
shortly,  feeling  thirsty,  I  laid  my  hand  upon  a  glass 
of  water  which  I  had  kept  at  my  bedside.  In  setting 
down  the  glass,  I  spilled  some  of  the  water,  and  rose 
from  the  bed  to  see  what  damage  had  been  done.  As 
soon  as  I  had  got  a  light  and  looked  about  me  I 
perceived  that  my  trousers  had  been  thrown  off  a  chair 
on  to  the  floor  (the  sound  of  this  must  have  been  what 
woke  me  up  in  the  first  instance),  and  that  my  other 
clothes  lay  on  the  chair  in  inverted  order.  I  then 
discovered  that  some  stranger  must  really  have  entered 
the  room.  I  felt  in  my  trousers  pocket  for  my  purse, 
containing  about  £60  in  foreign  money,  and  it  was 
gone  ;  and,  what  I  liked  still  less,  when  I  soon  after- 
wards discovered  it,  my  watch,  an  old  gold  repeater 
which  had  been  my  grandfather's  from  some  such  date 
(I  dare  say)  as  1810,  was  gone  also,  with  its  gold  chain,  a 
cherished  gift  from  my  wife  not  long  after  our  marriage. 
The  value  of  the  watch  and  chain  was  (as  I  was  credibly 
informed  at  a  later  date)  probably  not  less  than  £40. 
Luckily  I  had  kept  some  English  money,  about  ^40,  in 
a  different  purse,  in  my  coat-pocket ;  and  I  inferred 
that  the  thief  must  have  been  searching  in  my  coat 


OUR   CHILDREN  459 

at  the  moment  when  he  upset  the  trousers,  and  so 
roused  me  from  slumber.  I  rang  the  bell  for  the  night- 
porter.  He  came,  and  I  explained  the  facts  to  him,  and 
asked  him  to  make  inquiry,  and  take  all  requisite  pre- 
cautions. He  left  the  room,  and  walked  some  few  steps 
away  along  the  corridor.  It  was  at  that  moment  that  I 
first  noticed  the  absence  of  the  watch  and  chain  :  so 
I  opened  the  door,  very  scantily  clad,  to  speak  to  the 
night-porter  once  again.  I  saw  him  in  conversation, 
in  a  rather  low  tone  of  voice,  with  a  tall  robust  man 
whose  back  was  turned  to  me.  I  could  not  catch 
what  they  said  (and  indeed  seldom  do  catch  what 
is  said  in  German)  :  I  did  not  care  to  interrupt  them 
at  the  moment,  so  I  simply  stood  at  my  door — 
visible  at  any  rate  to  the  porter,  and  I  presume  that  his 
companion  likewise  was  conscious  of  my  presence.  The 
talk  lasted  some  little  while  :  finally  the  two  men  walked 
downstairs  together,  and  I  could  hear  the  opening  and 
closing  of  a  door.  In  a  short  while  the  hotel-keeper, 
M.  Flack,  and  two  or  three  policemen,  were  assembled 
in  the  night-porter's  lodge,  and  I  joined  them  there. 
M.  Fltlck  questioned  the  night-porter  as  to  what  had 
occurred,  and  was  as  much  astonished  as  I  was  to  hear 
the  following  narrative.  At  about  eleven  at  night  (much 
the  same  hour  when  I  had  retired  to  bed)  an  unknown 
man  presented  himself  at  the  hotel,  without  any  luggage, 
and  asked  the  night-porter  to  give  him  a  room.  The 
porter,  quite  contrary  to  the  rule  of  the  house,  complied, 
and  placed  him  in  a  room  within  a  few  doors  of  mine  : 
the  name  which  he  gave  was  Dr.  Gerber  of  Strasburg. 
This  Dr.  Gerber  was  the  same  person  whom  I  had  seen 
speaking  to  the  porter  after  the  latter  had  been  told 
of  the  robbery  in  my  room.  The  conversation  between 


460        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

the  two  was  to  the  effect  that  Dr.  Gerber  failed  to 
get  to  sleep,  and  wanted  to  be  let  out  of  the  hotel ;  and, 
incredible  as  it  might  seem,  the  porter,  aware  as  he  was 
of  the  robbery,  let  him  out.  A  sharp,  and  surely  a 
much-needed,  reprimand  was  administered  by  M.  Fluck ; 
and  all  persons  to  whom  I  have  since  related  the  facts 
exclaim  at  once,  "  The  porter  must  have  been  in  conni- 
vance with  the  thief."  I  am  unwilling  to  suppose  so, 
and  I  credit  him  rather  with  a  mixture  of  dense  un- 
suspiciousness  and  denser  stolidity  :  he  was  not  dismissed 
(so  I  learned  before  leaving  the  hotel). 

The  police  acted  with  promptitude  and  efficacy,  send- 
ing notice  about  the  watch  and  other  details  all  over 
Switzerland  ;  and,  not  many  days  after  settling  at  Davos 
Platz,  I  was  informed  that  my  watch  and  chain,  with 
about  £20  in  money,  had  been  recovered  from  a  notori- 
ous criminal,  Alexander  Staude  (no  longer  Dr.  Gerber) 
of  Strasburg.  One  may  suppose  that,  in  those  few  days, 
he  had  been  giving  himself  "  a  high  old  time  "  with  the 
balance  of  my  £60.  Before  the  end  of  1896  Staude 
was  brought  to  trial  in  Karlsruhe  (Baden),  and  received 
the  swingeing  sentence  of  ten  years'  imprisonment  ; 
this  was  not  his  first  conviction,  and  I  think  that  the 
offence  committed  in  my  case  was  not  the  only  one 
brought  against  him  on  this  occasion.  Is  he  still  in  jail  ? 
I  presume  so.  I  should  have  preferred  to  hear  of  a 
lighter  penalty ;  but,  not  long  after  that,  I  saw  an  account, 
in  one  of  the  London  newspapers,  of  the  system  of 
prison  discipline  in  Germany,  which  appears  to  be  of  a 
much  less  cast-iron  kind  than  in  England.  I  even  found 
it  stated  that  the  prisoners  are  permitted  to  get  up,  or  to 
attend,  a  concert  at  frequent  intervals — once  a  week  or 
so.  Perhaps  Herr  Alexander  Staude,  who  seemed  a 


OUR  CHILDREN 

little  turned  of  forty  when  I  saw  him,  is  qualifying,  no 
longer  for  the  medical  profession,  but  as  a  musical  vir- 
tuoso, and  may  yet  fascinate  suburban  London  as  a 
member  of  a  German  band. 

Why  "Dr.  Gerber  of  Strasburg"  had  pitched  upon 
me,  rather  than  any  one  else  in  the  hotel,  as  a  suitable 
subject  for  his  enterprise,  was  not  quite  apparent.  I 
recollected  however  that,  at  some  railway  station  at  which 
we  had  stopped  as  we  approached  Bale,  I  had  entered 
the  small  refreshment  room,  where  several  persons  were 
present,  and  had  taken  out  my  well-filled  purse  to  pay 
for  some  chocolate.  I  fancy  that  the  Doctor  must  have 
been  one  of  the  persons  in  question,  and  must  have 
noticed  the  plethora  of  my  purse,  and  formed  the  opinion 
that  it  required  bleeding,  and  followed  me  in  the  train  to 
the  hotel.  He  made  a  successful  coup,  but  there  was  a 
Nemesis  on  his  trail. 

I  will  here  bear  my  testimony  to  an  upright  lawyer. 
On  my  speaking  to  M.  Fliick,  he  had  denied  my  being 
entitled  to  any  compensation  from  him  for  the  theft 
committed  in  his  hotel — on  the  ground  (and  to  me  it 
seemed  tenable)  that  the  fault  was  greatly  my  own  in 
having  left  my  door  unbolted.  I  then  spoke  to  a  lawyer 
in  Bale,  Dr.  Kern.  He  at  once  informed  me  that 
M.  Flttck  was  a  leading  client  of  his  own  ;  but  that  he 
would  consider  the  point,  and  advise  me  as  to  my  legal 
rights.  This  he  did  by  letter,  expressing  a  clear  opinion 
that  my  claim  to  compensation  was  valid  ;  but  that,  as 
it  might  be  inconvenient  to  me  to  attend  in  court,  and 
the  issue  of  an  action  must  always  be  a  little  uncertain, 
it  might  perhaps  serve  my  interests  better  to  enter  into 
some  compromise.  I  proposed  terms  of  compromise, 
which  would  I  suppose  have  been  accepted  ;  but,  on 


462        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

the  recovery  of  a  portion  of  my  property,  I  gladly 
dropped  the  whole  affair,  thanking  Dr.  Kern  for  his 
advice. 

Davos  Platz,  when  Helen  and  I  reached  it  on  25  Jan- 
uary, was  a  mass  of  snow.  Snow  is  a  natural  pheno- 
menon which,  from  an  aesthetic  point  of  view,  I  can 
enjoy  as  well  as  other  people  ;  but  I  have  not  much 
relish  for  it  as  a  daily  environment,  and  Helen  had  still 
less.  Davos  Platz  in  winter  is  a  place  where  one  ought 
to  do  skating,  tobogganing,  and  the  like.  If  one  engages 
con  amore  in  these  exercises,  one  lives  there  in  a  frigid 
paradise  ;  if  not,  one  lacks  the  paradise,  and  has  the 
frigidity.  Helen  shared  my  inaptitude  for  anything  of 
the  sort.  We  did  a  large  amount  of  sledging  however, 
and  with  keen  enjoyment. 

Helen's  health  derived  some  benefit  from  her  sojourn 
at  Davos  Platz,  followed  by  Pallanza  and  the  brief  sea 
voyage  from  Genoa  homewards.  Still  she  was  not 
well ;  and  in  the  autumn  the  doctor  whom  she  con- 
sulted, Dr.  Allport  (a  son  of  the  Mrs.  Allport  mentioned 
on  p.  432),  strongly  urged  that  she  should  take  a  long 
voyage,  terminating  in  Australia.  Helen  and  I  pleaded 
for  Japan  as  a  substitute  ;  but  the  doctor  was  firm,  so 
to  Australia  we  went.  On  24  December  1896  we 
entered  the  steamer  Nineveh,  of  the  Aberdeen  line, 
Captain  Allan,  a  bluff  and  genial  Hercules.  In  our 
route  we  made  a  short  stoppage  at  TenerifFe,  and  again 
at  Cape  Town.  After  that  there  was  no  more  land  for 
us  until  we  reached  Melbourne  on  5  February  1897. 
We  both  took  a  vivid  delight  in  this  sea  voyage,  which 
involved  two  rather  exceptional  experiences.  Pursuing 
a  somewhat  more  southerly  course  than  usual  in  the 
Pacific,  we  encountered  numerous  icebergs — an  incident 


OUR   CHILDREN  463 

which,  as  the  captain  assured  us,  had  never  before 
befallen  him  in  forty-two  voyages  which  he  had  made  in 
those  latitudes.  In  one  day  of  foggy  weather  we 
sighted  fifty-three  icebergs,  and,  but  for  skilful  seaman- 
ship, we  ran  a  very  considerable  chance  of  scrunching 
into  one  of  them,  of  colossal  bulk.  Helen  however 
flinched  not  at  all.  Then,  just  before  reaching  Mel- 
bourne, the  ship's  doctor  (a  young  man  who  stood 
nearly  six  foot  five)  announced  to  us  that  various  cases 
of  illness  which  had  been  talked  of  among  us  for  days 
past  really  meant  small-pox.  The  captain  was  grievously 
ill,  and  two  or  three  of  the  officers,  and  others  of  the 
•stewards  and  crew  :  a  pantryman,  it  was  given  out,  had 
been  under  the  infection  ever  since  we  left  London. 
Of  the  passengers,  none,  with  one  dubious  exception, 
caught  the  disease.  So,  as  we  approached  Melbourne, 
we  had  to  fly  the  yellow  flag.  A  well-known  doctor, 
Tweeddale,  came  out  to  examine  us  :  his  examination 
appeared  to  me  cursory  in  the  last  degree,  but  the 
declared  result  was  a  satisfaction  to  our  minds — no 
infection  needed  to  be  feared,  and  a  clean  bill  of  health 
was  accorded. 

But  this  roseate  view  of  the  case  did  not  last  long. 
On  the  second  night  after  we  had  entered  Melbourne 
Harbour  a  different  doctor,  getting  scent  of  the  facts, 
came  on  board  and  pronounced  small-pox  to  be  raging. 
A  great  flurry  ensued  in  Melbourne,  and  for  some  days 
the  newspapers  echoed  with  "  Small-pox  on  board  the 
Nineveh — Severe  Precautions,"  etc.,  etc.  And  indeed 
the  precautions  were  severe.  All  on  board  were  re- 
vaccinated  and  quarantined,  including  policemen  and 
visitors  who  had  set  a  casual  foot  on  the  vessel ;  a  few 
passengers  who  had  already  left  were  recalled — one 


464        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

couple  from  remote  Gipsland.  The  next  stage  was  to 
separate  us  into  such  persons  as  had  to  be  quarantined 
at  Melbourne,  and  such  as  might  be  permitted  to 
proceed  to  Sydney,  there  to  be  quarantined.  My 
daughter  and  I  were  of  the  latter.  We  went  on  to  the 
Heads  in  Sydney  Harbour,  and  were  drafted  into  the 
quarantine-station.  Luckily  this  is  a  spacious  and 
agreeable  bungalow  building,  commanding  noble  views 
of  the  harbour,  one  of  the  grand  sights  of  the  world. 
Those  persons  upon  whom  the  vaccination  worked  well 
were  released  at  the  end  of  ten  days  ;  those  in  contrary 
case  had  to  remain  the  full  term  of  twenty-one  days. 
Helen  was  among  these,  and  I  of  course  remained  with 
her.  We  had  free  victualling  from  the  Nineveh,  and 
the  services  of  her  stewards,  and  all  went  well,  in 
weather  of  an  intenser  settled  heat  than  I  had  ever 
known  before. 

I  will  finish  up  with  the  small-pox  by  saying  that 
Captain  Allan  finally  recovered,  to  the  great  satisfaction 
of  all  the  passengers  who  heard  the  news.  Two  of  the 
officers  died,  and  I  think  more  than  one  of  the  crew  ; 
others  were  miserably  disfigured.  Dr.  Tweeddale,  who 
had  made  the  blunder  of  passing  us  as  free  from 
infection,  died  suddenly  in  a  street  in  Melbourne  on 
26  March.  No  doubt  the  poor  elderly  gentleman  must 
have  been  brow-beaten  and  badgered  to  a  sad  extent  in 
the  interval  by  the  press  and  his  fellow-citizens.  When 
Captain  Allan  became  incapacitated  by  the  illness,  the 
first  officer  was  promoted,  and  became  Captain  Schleman> 
whom  I  bear  in  agreeable  recollection. 

Mrs.  Allport  had  two  sons  settled  in  Sydney,  Robert 
and  Roland,  with  their  wives  and  families  ;  she  herself 
was  then  in  Sydney,  alternating  her  sojourn  between  the 


OUR   CHILDREN  465 

two.  Prior  to  leaving  London,  we  had  received  a  hos- 
pitable invitation  from  Mr.  Roland  Allport  to  stay  at 
his  house,  on  the  outskirts  of  North  Sydney.  Thither 
we  proceeded  after  our  release  from  quarantine  ;  we 
were  made  exceedingly  welcome  by  our  pleasant  host  and 
hostess,  seconded  by  Mrs.  Allport  herself,  and  we  passed 
an  enjoyable  time  in  the  capital  of  New  South  Wales. 
Our  stay  only  lasted  from  6  to  20  March  ;  but  for  the 
quarantining,  it  would  have  been  doubled.  In  this  the 
early  autumnal  season  of  Australia  we  found  the  climate 
variable  ;  some  days  being  extremely  hot — a  solid  move- 
less heat  new  to  my  experience,  and  mostly  pleasing  to 
me,  for  whom  heat  is  seldom  in  excess — whereas  on  one 
or  two  evenings  a  fire  proved  agreeable.  There  was  a 
"  buster "  with  dust-whirl  now  and  again  ;  of  rain  I 
recollect  very  little.  We  wanted  a  wombat  to  take  home ; 
but  found  that  at  Sydney  such  a  beast  is  counted  almost 
as  extraneous  as  in  London.  He  figures  in  Zoological 
Gardens,  but  not  in  the  walk  of  life  of  a  Sydneyite. 

After  passing  a  day  in  Ceylon  (Colombo),  we  two, 
through  the  Red  Sea  and  the  Suez  Canal,  bore  on  to 
Naples,  reaching  that  city  on  29  April.  One  of  my 
attacks  of  gout  had  begun  in  November  1896,  some 
weeks  before  I  started  from  London  ;  it  stuck  to  me  on 
and  off  throughout  the  voyages,  and  was  not  fully  sur- 
mounted until  September  1897.  On  reaching  Naples  I 
found  myself  so  far  discomforted  that  I  resolved  to  get 
back  to  London  with  all  convenient  speed.  I  accom- 
panied Helen  to  Genoa  after  a  few  days  in  Naples  ;  and 
in  Genoa  I  left  her  with  her  elder  sister  Olivia,  whom  I 
had  invited  over  from  home.  I  then  returned  to  London ; 
they  proceeded  to  Florence,  and  after  a  while  rejoined 
me.  In  both  our  voyages  Helen  and  I  had  some  amount 


466        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

of  rough  weather,  but  nothing  to  be  called  a  tempest ; 
fortunately  for  us,  we  were  both  entirely  free  from  sea- 
sickness— not  even  a  qualm  assailed  me. 

Olivia,  in  leaving  London  for  Genoa  through  Turin, 
had  a  queer  adventure,  consequent  upon  her  connexions 
with  anarchists  and  exiles.  She  was  timed  to  reach  Turin 
-on  the  day  when  an  exhibition  was  to  be  opened  by  King 
Humbert.  As  she  was  taking  her  place  in  the  train  in 
London,  a  man,  whom  she  hardly  knew  even  by  sight,1 
accosted  her,  and  claimed  some  acquaintance,  and  was 
•obstinately  bent  upon  entering  the  same  carriage.  He 
was  a  police  spy,  of  one  or  other  grade  of  unattractive- 
ness.  Olivia  repelled  his  advances,  spoke  to  a  railway 
official,  and  got  him  sent  about  his  business.  He  then, 
it  would  seem,  telegraphed  to  the  police  in  Turin  that  a 
•suspicious  character  was  about  to  make  her  appearance 
there,  and  might  be  dangerous  to  the  Royal  Majesty  of 
Italy.  On  reaching  Turin,  Olivia  was  detained  and 
marched  off  to  a  police-station,  and  her  luggage  rigor- 
ously overhauled.  It  contained  neither  dynamite,  re- 
volver, nor  stiletto,  and,  after  some  questioning  and  the 
consequent  losing  of  her  train,  she  was  allowed  to  pro- 
ceed to  Genoa.  Here,  as  I  myself  witnessed  unmistake- 
ably,  she  was  shadowed  by  the  police  ;  if  we  started  in  a 
cab  to  see  the  sights,  a  detective  started  in  her  wake  in 
another  cab.  The  matter  excited  some  notice  in  Italian 
newspapers  (which  were  good  enough  to  compliment  the 
personal  appearance  of  my  daughter,  "  the  grandchild 
of  the  illustrious  poet-patriot  and  refugee  Gabriele 
Rossetti "),  and,  if  I  remember  right,  in  some  English 
newspapers  as  well.  An  Italian  Member  of  Parliament, 

1  This  person  figures  under  the  name  of  "  Limpet "  in  the  Girl  among 
jhe  Anarchists. 


OUR   CHILDREN  467 

Riccardo  Selvatico  whom  I  had  known  in  Venice  in  1895, 
wrote  to  me  asking  for  details  on  which  he  could  found 
a  question  to  the  Minister  :  Olivia  then  noted  down  the 
particulars,  but  I  doubt  whether  anything  further  was 
done.  The  police-agent  in  London,  as  I  understood, 
was  considered  to  have  exceeded  his  duty,  and  was 
reduced  to  a  lower  post.  As  the  wife  of  an  Italian 
domiciled  in  Italy,  Olivia  is  now  an  Italian  subject.  She 
has  not,  since  her  wedding,  been  ever  molested  by  the 
police,  nor  visibly  subjected  to  any  kind  of  surveillance. 

On  the  return  voyage  from  Australia  a  singular  per- 
sonage came  on  board — at  Adelaide  ;  Mr.  Carr-Boyd,  an 
explorer  who  had  travelled  much  in  the  interior  of 
Australia — partly,  I  gathered,  on  his  own  account,  and 
partly  commissioned  by  public  bodies  in  quest  of  fresh 
gold-fields.  He  averred  that  he  had  twice  traversed  the 
so-called  Central  Australian  desert,  and  that  no  such 
thing  really  exists.  It  is  all  fine,  promising  land  ;  it  is 
not  waterless,  but  some  devices  have  to  be  resorted  to 
at  times  for  procuring  the  water.  Mr.  Carr-Boyd  was 
(or  is)  a  tall,  straight,  athletic,  black-browed  man,  then, 
I  presume,  approaching  fifty  years  of  age  ;  of  stern, 
rather  hard  and  menacing  aspect,  but,  in  my  experience, 
not  at  all  wanting  in  good-nature.  He  seemed  full  of 
robust  self-confidence,  and  fellow-passengers  considered 
him  rather  addicted  to  "  drawing  the  long  bow."  From 
this  view  I  did  not  dissent ;  yet  it  appears  to  me  that 
characters  of  this  type  come  nearer  to  crediting  what 
they  themselves  say  than  outsiders  are  ready  to  suppose. 

There  are  several  other  persons  whom  I  recall,  whether 
in  the  Davos  Platz  or  in  the  Australian  expedition  ;  but 
what  I  have  here  said  may,  in  the  reader's  eyes,  be 
enough,  or  more  than  enough. 


XXVIII 

LITERARY   AND   LECTURING   WORK 
1874   TO    1893 

TN  my  23rd  and  24th  Sections  I  have  been  led  to 
say  certain  things  which  according  to  the  order  of 
date  would  more  properly  belong  to  the  years  I  have 
now  to  deal  with.  Some  other  details  remain  to  be 
mentioned. 

The  literary  review  named  The  Academy  was  founded 
in  1869  by  Dr.  Charles  Appleton,  an  Oxford  man,  who 
invited  me  to  write  there  some  critiques  of  books.  I 
did  so  to  a  small  extent  ;  noticing  among  other  things 
the  Songs  of  the  Sierras  by  the  Californian  poet  Joaquin 
Miller — a  book  in  which  I  found  a  great  deal  calling  for 
unstinted  admiration.  Towards  the  beginning  of  1874 
Dr.  Appleton  asked  me  to  undertake  the  ordinary  art- 
criticism  of  exhibitions  etc. — not  including  the  exhibi- 
tions of  old  masters.  I  assented,  and  did  a  rather  large 
amount  of  work  in  this  way.  All  my  longer  articles 
were  signed,  a  plan  which  I  vastly  preferred  to  the 
anonymous  system.  By  1874  several  years  had  elapsed 
since  I  had  been  the  regular  art-critic  of  any  journal  ; 
even  my  pamphlet-review  of  the  Royal  Academy,  written 
in  co-operation  with  Mr.  Swinburne,  was  six  years  old. 
In  early  youth  I  had  done  that  sort  of  work  with  con- 
siderable zest ;  partly  because  it  enabled  me  to  strike  a 

468 


LITERARY  AND  LECTURING  WORK     469 

-stroke  or  two  for  the  "  Praeraphaelite  "  painters  in  the 
days  when  they  were  ringed  round  with  foes,  and  to 
carry  the  battle  into  the  enemy's  camp.  But  in  1874, 
when  I  was  forty-four  years  of  age,  I  was  by  no  means 
enamoured  of  such  occupation  ;  it  was  stale  to  me,  and 
to  a  great  extent  monotonous,  and  moreover  it  often 
diverted  me  at  inconvenient  moments  from  my  regular 
work  at  Somerset  House.  I  had  to  run  out  to  an  ex- 
hibition when  I  had  more  than  enough  employ  at  my 
-office-desk.  In  the  confidence  of  private  intercourse  I 
once  and  again  said  as  much  to  Dr.  Appleton  ;  always 
giving  him  to  understand  however  that,  as  I  was  now  a 
family-man,  and  not  justified  in  throwing  up  any  source 
of  regular  income,  I  was  fully  minded  to  continue  my 
function  as  art-critic.  My  critiques  were  I  suppose  at 
least  as  good  as  they  had  been  in  my  earlier  days,  and 
therefore  well  up  to  the  standard  of  performance  upon 
which  the  editor  had  based  his  request  that  I  should  fill 
this  post.  Thus  I  was  rather  taken  aback  when,  one 
•evening  in  1878,  I  received  from  Dr.  Appleton,  without 
any  even  remote  forewarning,  a  letter  saying  that  he  had 
relieved  me  of  my  work,  and  transferred  it  to  Mr. 
Comyns  Carr — a  gentleman  with  whom  I  had  some,  but 
only  a  casual,  acquaintance.  The  editor  professed  in  his 
letter  to  be  doing  this  in  order  to  meet  my  own  wish. 
I  replied  saying  that  he  had  wholly  misapprehended  my 
wish,  whether  as  privily  entertained  by  myself,  or  as 
more  than  once  expressed  to  him  by  word  of  mouth. 
This  rectification  was  sure  to  be  of  no  avail.  Dr. 
Appleton  had  resolved,  whatever  the  reason  (of  which  I 
never  heard  anything  further),  to  be  quit  of  me.  He 
invited  me  to  write  literary  reviews  as  occasion  should 
serve  ;  but  I,  who  considered  myself  the  reverse  of  well 


470        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

treated,  did  not  close  with  this  proffer,  and  my  connex- 
ion with  The  Academy  was  finally  at  an  end.  It  is  quite 
possible  that  Mr.  Comyns  Carr  is  a  better  critic,  or  a. 
better  writer,  than  myself ;  one  may  safely  assume  that 
the  editor  thought  so.  Mr.  Carr  wrote  to  me  in  very 
civil  terms  to  say  that,  but  for  having  been  informed  by 
Dr.  Appleton  that  I  wished  to  resign,  he  would  not  have 
consented  to  become  the  art-critic  ;  I  naturally  replied 
that,  whether  or  not,  his  own  action  appeared  to  me 
perfectly  unexceptionable,  whatever  I  might  think  of  the 
editor's. 

Not  very  long  after  this  transaction,  Dr.  Appleton,, 
who  had  sought  the  clime  of  Egypt  as  a  palliative  against 
pulmonary  disease,  died  in  that  country  still  comparatively 
young.  He  was  a  bright-eyed,  fresh-complexioned  man, 
of  polite  address  corresponding  to  his  standing  as 
"  University  man,"  and  by  me  and  mine  very  well  liked. 
Francis  Hueffer  had  at  one  time  acted  as  sub-editor  of 
The  Academy. 

Ousted  from  this  periodical,  and  wishing  to  repair  the 
gap  in  my  annual  receipts,  I  bethought  me  of  The 
<d[then<eumy  then  under  the  editorship  of  Mr.  Norman 
MacColl.  As  I  have  before  mentioned,  this  review  had 
contained  a  very  hostile  critique  of  my  edition  of 
Shelley's  poems  in  1870  ;  but,  not  long  after  that  time,. 
I  had  been  informed  (I  think  by  Miss  Blind)  that  Mr. 
MacColl,  with  whom  I  had  some  slight  personal  acquaint- 
ance about  the  same  date,  would  be  inclined  to  receive 
some  contribution  from  me,  and  thus  bring  any  an- 
tagonism to  a  close.  I  did  not  take  advantage  of  the 
suggestion,  not  having  then  anything  that  I  wanted  to 
offer.  But  after  leaving  The  Academy  I  addressed  Mr. 
MacColl,  having  first  consulted  with  Mr.  Watts-Dunton,, 


LITERARY  AND  LECTURING  WORK     471 

who  favoured  my  proposal.  Mr.  MacColl  very  readily 
acquiesced.  I  saw  him  with  moderate  frequency  after 
this  period,  and  he  was  always  amicable,  and  particularly 
courteous  to  my  wife.  I  did  not  however  obtain,  nor 
yet  solicit,  any  regular  appointment  on  the  staff  of  The 
*Athen<eum :  a  few  books  were  sent  to  me  from  time  to* 
time — more  particularly  such  as  related  to  Dante  or  to 
Shelley.  With  fine  art  I  had  nothing  to  do.  The 
number  of  books  tended  in  the  course  of  years  to- 
diminish  rather  than  increase,  and  it  may  be  that  none 
reached  me  after  1895.  By  tnat  date,  having  other 
literary  avocations  and  more  command  of  ready  money,, 
I  was  quite  content  to  relinquish  any  such  book-review- 
ing, and  I  never  inquired  why  the  supply  had  come  to 
an  end.  At  the  opening  of  1901  Mr.  MacColl  retired 
from  The  Athenaeum  :  the  art  critic,  my  old  friend  Mr. 
Frederic  G.  Stephens,  also  retired. 

I  will  here  confess  one  of  my  sins.  In  1878  the  editor 
sent  me  for  review  two  books  which  were  republications 
got  up  by  Mr.  Richard  Herne  Shepherd.  One  was  some 
early  poems  by  Longfellow,  and  the  other  was  the  Studies 
of  Sensation  and  Event  by  Ebenezer  Jones — a  book  of 
poems  which  my  brother  and  I  had  read  long  ago,  towards 
1847,  w^h  keen  though  qualified  liking.  It  happened 
that  in  a  previous  instance  Mr.  Shepherd  had  brought 
out  some  early  poems  by  Mrs.  Browning.  This  was  a 
literary  misdeed  ;  as  the  only  person  properly  qualified 
to  decide  whether  these  juvenile  performances  should  be 
revived  or  not,  Mr.  Browning,  was  wholly  adverse  to  the 
project.  The  Athenaeum  commented  severely  upon  Mr. 
Shepherd's  performance  in  Mrs.  Browning's  case :  I  know 
who  the  writer  was,  but  possibly  I  ought  not  to  say. 
When  the  Longfellow  and  Jones  volumes  reached  me  I 


472        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

did  not  think  that  Mr.  Shepherd  had  done  any  harm  in 
resuscitating  those  writings — indeed  the  contrary  so  far  as 
Jones  was  concerned  ;  but,  as  I  considered  Mr.  Shepherd 
to  be  a  man  rather  too  free  in  his  wonted  line  of  opera- 
tions, and  as  I  was  aware  that  he  had  already  fallen 
under  the  lash  of  The  Athen#umy  I  thought  it  permissible 
to  open  my  review,  which  was  on  the  whole  commenda- 
tory, with  some  general  remarks  about  "  literary  vam- 
pires "  or  what  not.  I  regarded  these  preliminaries  as 
"  chaff"  of  an  essentially  harmless  though  in  intention 
pungent  kind  :  it  never  occurred  to  me  that  they  could 
be,  or  be  construed  as  being,  libellous.  But  herein  I  was 
wrong,  and  I  ought  to  have  known  better,  and  written 
with  more  reserve.  Mr.  Shepherd  resented  the  remarks, 
and  raised  against  the  publisher  of  The  Athenaeum  an 
action  for  libel,  grounded  upon  the  old  article  concerning 
Mrs.  Browning,  and  upon  my  new  one.  The  case  came 
into  court  in  June  1879,  and  the  jury  awarded  the  plain- 
tiff the  not  inconsiderable  damages  of  £i  50  (treatment 
very  different,  I  may  observe,  from  that  which  Mr. 
Whistler  had  experienced  about  a  year  before).  My 
name,  I  heard,  did  not  transpire  at  all  at  any  stage  of 
the  proceedings.  I  offered  to  bear  what  I  thought  my 
suitable  share,  one  third,  of  the  damages,  but  the  pro- 
prietor of  the  review,  Sir  Charles  Dilke,  did  not  care  to 
accept  my  tender,  and  he,  I  presume,  paid  the  whole  of 
the  damages  and  costs.  Since  that  date  I  have  not  been 
much  in  the  way  of  writing  or  publishing  tart  things 
about  any  one,  and  I  should  feel  that  the  temptation  is 
one  to  be  steadily  resisted. 

In  1876  I  was  invited  to  write  notices  of  painters  in 
the  Encyclopedia  Britannica:  it  was  Dr.  Garnett  who 
recommended  the  editor,  then  Mr.  Spenser  Baynes, 


LITERARY  AND  LECTURING  WORK     473 

to  apply  to  me.  I  wrote  a  great  number  of  notices, 
mostly  but  not  exclusively  of  Italian  masters — Correggio, 
Perugino,  Titian,  Tintoret,  etc.  Sometimes  I  took  up 
an  article  printed  in  an  earlier  edition  of  the  Encyclopedia^ 
and  altered  it  according  to  more  recent  information  and 
to  my  own  views — e.g.  Canova,  Haydon,  and  Murillo. 
Canaletto  and  Canova  were  the  first  two  articles  falling 
to  me.  The  only  notice  of  mine  unconnected  with  an 
artist  is  that  upon  Shelley.  This  work  went  on  at 
intervals  for  several  years.  I  also  wrote,  on  request, 
the  account  of  Ford  Madox  Brown  in  the  supplement  to 
the  Encyclopedia.  If  all  these  articles  of  mine  were  to  be 
put  together,  they  would  make  a  substantial  booklet  or 
book,  not  deep  in  scholarship,  yet  not  perhaps  greatly 
behind-hand  in  the  information  they  supply  according 
to  the  dates  when  they  were  produced.  In  1905  I 
had  to  revise  them  for  a  forthcoming  re-edition  of  the 
Encyclopedia.  The  series  would  however  be  markedly 
incomplete,  as  a  good  number  of  notices  of  Italian  (not 
to  mention  other)  painters  were  written  by  different 
contributors — for  instance,  those  on  Michelangelo  and 
Raphael.  My  function  was  rather  that  of  the  "  utility 
man  "  than  of  the  desiderated  expert  bespeaking  his  own 
subjects. 

At  the  beginning  of  1881  I  again  took  to  writing  in 
verse  :  I  had  done  next  to  nothing  of  the  sort  (setting 
aside  my  Dante  translation)  since  the  remote  year  1849. 
There  was  however  a  sonnet,  Shelley's  Heart,  written 
towards  1870,  and  published  in  The  Dark  Blue.  It  was 
my  brother  who  urged  me  to  resume.  He  held  the 
opinion  that  I  had  a  definite  degree  of  poetic  endow- 
ment which,  though  allowed  to  lie  dormant  so  long, 
might  properly  be  utilized  and  brought  into  the  light  of 

IL N 


474        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

day  at  a  period  when  so  many  men  of  fair  literary 
faculty  elected  to  figure  as  poets  no  less  than  as  prose 
writers.  I  retained  and  expressed  a  certain  reluctance 
(which  had  always  been  potent  with  me)  to  come  forward 
as  a  moderately  good  poet  when  I  had  a  brother  and 
sister  who  were  positively  good  poets,  and  recognized 
as  such.  However,  we  discussed  the  matter  a  little,  and 
he  thought  that  my  best  course  would  be  to  write  a 
series  of  sonnets  upon  topics  in  which  I  felt  some  strong 
interest,  not  merely  private  or  personal.  The  project 
finally  shaped  itself  into  a  series  to  be  called  Democratic 
Sonnets,  relating  to  public  events  or  personages,  all  of 
my  own  time.  I  contemplated  a  hundred  as  a  proper 
number  ;  fewer  than  this  would  not  make  a  batch 
producible  as  a  small  volume.  I  wrote  the  first,  on 
Garibaldi,  when  I  was  absent  from  London,  in  January 
1 88 1,  to  deliver  some  lectures.  I  then  for  a  while 
proceeded  rapidly,  scarcely  a  day  passing  when  I  did 
not  draft  a  sonnet — occasionally  more  than  one.  I 
found  that  my  facility  in  this  first  drafting  work  was 
fully  adequate,  or  even  ample — reviving  the  memory  of 
olden  times  when  bouts  rimes  sonnets  were  rattled  off  by 
Dante  Gabriel  and  myself.  There  was  of  course  the 
after-task  of  revising  and  regulating.  I  had  written  a 
fair  number  of  these  sonnets  when  my  brother,  in  the 
month  of  April,  thought  I  was  expressing  strong  and 
subversive  opinions  with  dangerous  freedom  :  some 
details  on  the  subject  are  to  be  found  in  the  volume  of 
his  Family  Letters.  This  however  did  not  deter  me 
from  going  on  with  the  sonnets,  with  which  I  persevered 
for  some  months  further — perhaps  up  to  the  autumn 
of  the  same  year.  I  had  by  that  time  composed  seventy- 
two.  The  impulse  with  which  I  had  begun  slackened 


LITERARY  AND  LECTURING  WORK     475- 

in  time,  and  finally  died  out :  I  left  the  series  uncom- 
pleted. I  had  six  printed  for  my  private  convenience, 
and  a  very  few  have  been  published  in  anthologies.  I 
will  take  it  upon  me  to  express  my  opinion  of  these 
sonnets.  Some  of  them,  which  I  wrote  with  real 
interest  for  the  subject,  and  an  inclination  to  have  my 
say  about  it,  show  a  sufficient  measure  of  force  and 
ardour,  both  in  thought  and  in  diction — somewhat  less 
in  poetic  accomplishment.  Several  others,  which  I 
produced  merely  as  being  germane  in  theme  to  the 
series,  are  the  reverse  of  good.  This  therefore  was  my 
essential  reason  for  leaving  off.  The  series,  as  a  series, 
required  the  including  of  various  events  or  personages 
that  were  not  the  right  material  for  poetry  by  any  one, 
or  surely  not  by  me  ;  and  so,  as  I  could  not  do  any- 
thing to  satisfy  myself  in  this  phase  of  the  undertaking, 
I  preferred  to  drop  it  as  a  whole.  There  was  the 
alternative  of  cutting  out  all  the  sonnets  that  I  account 
bad,  whether  in  subject  or  in  treatment,  and  offering  the 
residue  for  publication  in  one  form  or  another.  From 
this  I  am  not  averse,  and  it  may  yet  be  accomplished. 

During  the  lifetime  of  my  brother  I  wrote  scarcely 
anything  about  him.  If  he  had  been  an  exhibiting 
artist,  I  should  of  necessity,  in  my  position  of  art-critic 
for  many  years  on  and  off,  have  been  bound  to  deal  with 
his  pictures  no  less  than  with  those  of  other  exhibitors. 
But,  as  he  withdrew  from  the  picture-shows  towards 
1 852, 1  had  very  little  opportunity  for  writing  concerning 
him.  A  few  observations  could  be  ferreted  out  from  my 
critiques  of  the  opening  years  ;  there  was  also  a  notice 
of  his  Early  Italian  Poets,  which,  at  the  direct  request  of 
Mr.  John  E.  Taylor,  the  editor  of  The  Parthenon  (a  re- 
cast form  of  The  Literary  Gazette),  I  penned  for  that 


476        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

paper.  My  being  precluded  by  circumstances  from  cri- 
ticizing my  brother's  art-work  was  not  altogether  contrary 
to  my  liking.  While  I  should  on  the  one  hand  have 
been  pleased  to  say  in  its  behalf  anything  that  I  might 
consider  just  and  true,  I  could  not  on  the  other  hand 
have  been  free  from  a  sense  that  criticism  from  a  brother, 
and  especially  commendation,  and  that  mostly  anony- 
mous, was  not  what  the  public  had  a  right  to  expect. 
After  Dante  Gabriel's  death  in  April  1882  my  position 
in  relation  to  this  matter  naturally  underwent  a  change. 
It  became  practically  inevitable  that  I  should  undertake 
to  write,  either  spontaneously  or  by  request,  various 
things  concerning  him  ;  I  have,  however,  from  first  to 
last  abstained  from  entering  upon  any  general  estimate  of 
his  claims  whether  as  painter  or  as  poet,  and  have  even 
been  very  chary  of  indicating  my  opinion  regarding 
individual  works.  What  I  have  written  has  been  chiefly 
in  the  way  of  statements  of  fact ;  sometimes  strictly 
biographical,  at  other  times  relating  to  his  pictures  and 
poems,  but  not  debating  their  merits  or  demerits.  In 
my  preface  I  have  specified  four  writings  of  mine 
as  to  my  brother,  between  the  years  1884  and  1889; 
there  was  also  the  catalogue  (which  I  compiled)  of  his 
remaining  works,  sold  off  my  Messrs.  Christie  in  1883. 
As  to  other  writings  of  later  date  I  shall  have  to  speak 
further  on. 

A  few  words  as  to  the  four  writings  here  referred  to. 
No.  i,  the  notes  in  The  Art  Journal  as  to  some  of  his 
works,  was  done  for  the  purpose  of  supplying  a  few 
particulars  and  explanations,  after  the  exhibitions  of 
Rossetti's  paintings  and  designs — in  the  Royal  Academy, 
the  Burlington  Fine  Arts  Club,  and  elsewhere — had  pro- 
duced their  crop  of  comments  and  surmises.  No.  2, 


LITERARY  AND  LECTURING  WORK     477 

the  Collected  Works  in  prose  and  verse,  1886,  required  a 
good  deal  of  consideration,  both  as  to  the  compiling  of 
the  contents  from  various  sources,  published  and  unpub- 
lished, and  as  to  the  prefacing  and  annotating  of  them — 
matters  in  which  I  aimed  to  be  brief  and  condensed 
rather  than  discursive.  There  ought  at  some  future  day 
to  be  a  new  issue  of  the  Collected  Works,  including  various 
compositions,  most  of  which  have  appeared  in  some 
scattered  forms  since  1886.  Meanwhile  an  edition 
comprising  most  of  the  original  Collected  Poems  and 
illustrated  by  Rossetti's  own  designs,  was  published  at 
the  end  of  1 904  ;  I  attended  to  it,  annotating  and  eluci- 
dating more  freely.  Several  of  Rossetti's  writings  are 
now  near  to  running  out  of  copyright  :  some  of  those 
for  which  copyright  is  already  expired  have  been  re- 
printed by  one  or  other  publisher,  without  my  being 
able  or  desirous  to  exercise  any  control.  No.  3,  articles 
on  the  Portraits  of  Dante  Rossetti,  remains  as  yet,  I 
apprehend,  the  only  treatment  of  that  subject.  There 
are  a  few  persons  alive — Holman  Hunt,  Stephens, 
Swinburne,  George  Meredith,  Lady  Burne- Jones, 
Shields,  Gosse,  Watts-Dunton,  Fairfax  Murray,  Hall 
Caine — who  would  be  well  qualified  to  deal  with  it 
within  certain  limits  of  date  :  none  except  myself  knows 
what  Dante  Rossetti  was  like  from  early  childhood  till 
the  day  of  his  death.  No.  4,  the  volume  named  Dante 
Gabriel  Rossetti  as  Designer  and  Writer,  1889,  has  for 
several  years  past  been  out  of  print.  It  was  based 
entirely  upon  the  data  which  I  found  in  letters  written 
by  my  brother  and  remaining  in  my  own  hands,  upon 
those  which  he  had  addressed  to  Madox  Brown  and  to 
George  Rae,  and  upon  letters  addressed  to  himself  which 
after  his  death  came  to  me  ;  these  data  I  supplemented 


478        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

to  a  slight  extent  by  my  own  recollections,  but  without 
travelling  much  beyond  the  details  as  recorded  in  those 
same  letters.  The  book,  therefore — though  it  may  con- 
tain a  few  inaccuracies  here  and  there — is  highly  authen- 
tic so  far  as  it  goes,  showing  the  commencement  and 
progress  of  a  large  proportion  of  Rossetti's  works  as 
painter  and  author,  with  numerous  details  as  to  pur- 
chasers, purchase  money,  etc.  If  any  one  tells  me  that 
the  book  has  no  aesthetic  depth,  and  does  not  make  very 
entertaining  reading,  I  shall  cordially  agree  with  him  ; 
holding  none  the  less  that  the  contents  are  such  as 
deserve  to  be  borne  in  mind  by  persons  seriously  inter- 
ested in  Rossetti's  career,  and  are  serviceable  to  any 
person  minded  to  write  about  it.  I  added  to  the  volume 
a  literal  prose-version  or  amplification  of  the  sonnet- 
sequence  The  House  of  Life,  for  the  benefit  of  those  (and 
I  have  known  more  than  one,  especially  Madox  Brown) 
who  opined  that  the  sonnets  themselves  are  not  easy  to 
be  understood.  That  is  an  opinion  in  which  I  myself 
do  not  distinctly  agree  :  I  find  that  most  of  the  sonnets 
are  plain  enough,  and  that  others,  not  equally  per- 
spicuous, are  accessible  to  a  sympathetic  mind,  are  not 
hazier  than  other  literature  of  a  like  order,  and  are  in  no 
grave  need  of  a  commentator.  Still,  as  some  people 
will  have  it  that  the  series  is  obscure,  I  thought  it  a  good 
turn  to  them  and  to  the  author  to  make  them  less 
obscure,  however  prosaic  the  process  of  doing  so.  My 
brother  himself,  as  I  am  well  aware,  had  not  the  least 
wish  to  be  obscure.  To  himself,  his  thoughts,  whether 
in  these  sonnets  or  in  his  other  poems,  were  always 
clear  and  compacted  ;  and  he  took  a  large  amount  of 
pains  to  keep  the  diction  free  from  huddle  or  ambiguity. 
His  conceptions  may  have  been  sometimes  subtle  and 


LITERARY  AND  LECTURING  WORK     479 

rarefied — if  ever  they  became  nebulous,  that  was  quite 
against  his  will ;  in  style  he  aimed  at  elevation,  not  at 
inflation. 

In  1886  I  was  asked  to  write  a  biography  of  Keats,  to 
form  one  of  the  moderate-sized  volumes  in  the  series 
termed  Great  Writers.  I  very  willingly  consented.  The 
request  was  made  by  the  then  editor  of  the  series,  Mr. 
Eric  Robertson  ;  but  he  soon  afterwards  obtained  a 
Professorship  in  India,  and  the  editor  with  whom  I  was 
piiactically  concerned  was  his  successor,  Sir  Frank  T. 
Marzials — a  very  courteous  and  agreeable  gentleman, 
who  knew  when  and  how  to  make  a  suggestion,  and 
when  to  leave  the  decision  to  his  contributor.  I  read  all 
that  I  could  discover  about  Keats,  and  of  course  re- 
perused  the  whole  body  of  his  works  with  diligent 
application.  It  was  the  second  time  that  I  had  had 
something  to  do  with  this  fascinating  poet.  The  first 
time  was  in  the  series  Moxorfs  Popular  Poets,  followed  by 
the  Lives  of  Famous  Poets ;  later  on  there  was  a  third 
instance,  when  I  produced  the  annotated  edition  of 
Shelley's  Adonais.  My  biography  came  out  in  the 
autumn  of  1 8  8  7 ;  almost  simultaneously  with  a  biography 
by  Mr.  Sidney  Colvin,  in  a  different  series — but  I  had 
not  had  any  idea,  until  my  book  was  written,  that  he 
was  engaged  upon  the  same  theme.  I  am  a  hearty 
admirer  of  Keats,  and  I  expressed  my  admiration  heartily, 
but  certainly  not  in  a  tone  of  unmingled  or  cloying 
panegyric  ;  a  treatment  which  could  be  applied  to  no 
poet  with  less  appropriateness  than  to  Keats.  Some 
critics,  and  I  suppose  many  readers,  seemed  to  think 
that  I  had  dealt  with  the  subject  in  a  grudging  spirit ; 
which  had  not  been  my  intention,  nor  do  I  see  that  such 
a  conclusion  is  warranted  by  the  book  itself. 


480        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

What  is  the  true  and  rightful  principle  in  biography  ? 
A  very  serious  question,  which  is  answered  diversely  by 
two  different  classes  of  minds,  alike  sincere.  In  the  case 
of  a  poet  justly  honoured  and  loved,  such  as  Keats,  the 
question  may  be  held  to  apply  to  the  estimation  of  the 
writings  as  well  as  to  that  of  the  life  itself.  One  answer 
to  the  question  is  this.  The  chief  object  to  be  kept  in 
view  is  sympathy.  Defects  and  misdoings  should  not 
be  absolutely  ignored,  but  they  should  be  minimized  ; 
let  us  turn  a  blind  eye  to  them  as  far  as  manageable. 
The  portrait  presented  should  be  a  consciously  favour- 
able one.  Nothing  should  be  done  to  derogate  from  the 
ideal  type  of  the  original,  such  as  it  exists  in  the  thought 
of  his  votaries.  The  other  answer  to  the  question  is 
this.  The  chief  object  to  be  kept  in  view  is  truth. 
Defects  and  misdoings  should  not  be  minimized,  but 
stated  frankly  and  accurately,  without  the  least  animus, 
and  in  a  spirit  leaning  towards  indulgence.  The  portrait 
presented  should  be  favourable  so  far  as  candour  will 
allow.  The  ideal  type  should  not  be  defaced,  but  it 
should  assert  itself  athwart  the  haze  of  those  blemishes 
from  which  no  man  is  exempt ;  these,  considerately 
regarded,  will  define  rather  than  mar  the  ideal  type,  for 
after  all  the  ideal  type  is  simply  an  abstract  from  the 
man's  actual  performances,  his  doings  in  literature  and 
in  life.  This  second  answer  is  the  one  in  which  I 
decisively  acquiesce.  To  my  thinking,  it  allows  every- 
thing which  can  be  properly  conceded  to  that  impulse  of 
homage  which  befits  every  biographer  of  a  highly  gifted 
man.  It  provides  for  outspokenness,  and  excludes 
hostility.  By  hostility  I  mean  such  an  attitude  of  mind 
as  appears  in  Mr.  Jeaffreson's  book  The  Real  Shelley. 
Mr.  Jeaffreson  evidently  thought  that  Shelley,  though  a 


LITERARY  AND  LECTURING  WORK     481 

great  poet,  was  as  a  man  much  more  bad  than  good. 
Entertaining  that  opinion,  he  counted  himself  justified 
in  writing  a  book  to  illustrate  and  enforce  it.  I  on  the 
contrary  consider  that,  even  if  Shelley  had  been  a  bad 
man  (which  I  am  far  indeed  from  thinking),  a  book 
ought  not  to  be  written  for  the  express  purpose  of 
developing  that  opinion.  We  should  be  grateful  to  him 
for  his  glorious  poetry,  and  keenly  alive  to  his  personal 
merits,  though  straightforward  in  admitting  proved 
aberrations  of  character  or  of  action.  Disliking  and 
condemning  Shelley,  Mr.  Jeaffreson  became  at  once  the 
wrong  sort  of  person  to  write  his  life.  Browning,  in 
treating  of  "the  subjective  poet"  with  Shelley  as  his 
chief  type  of  the  class,  has  well  expressed  the  right  rela- 
tion of  reader  or  biographer  to  writer  :  "In  our  approach 
to  the  poetry,  we  necessarily  approach  the  personality  of 
the  poet ;  in  apprehending  it  we  apprehend  him,  and 
certainly  we  cannot  love  it  without  loving  him."  If  I, 
in  the  various  instances  where  I  have  undertaken  the 
office  of  biographer,  have  succeeded  in  acting  up  to  the 
principle  which  is  here  advocated  by  me,  I  am  well  con- 
tented to  abide  the  result. 

There  is  only  one  other  publication  of  mine  which  I 
need  mention  as  proper  to  these  years.  It  is  a  very 
small  affair  ;  but  I  took  pleasure  in  writing  it,  as  bearing 
on  Browning's  noble  (though  sometimes  desultory) 
poem  of  Sordello,  so  fascinating  to  the  days  of  my  youth. 
Its  title  is — Taurello  Salinguerra,  Muratori^  and  Browning: 
and  it  was  written, perhaps  towards  1887,  for  the  Browning 
Society,  of  which  I  was  not  at  any  time  a  member. 
Salinguerra  is,  scarce  less  than  Sordello  himself,  a  lead- 
ing personage  in  Browning's  poem  ;  but,  irrespective  of 
that  work,  I  presume  that  hardly  any  one  in  England 


482        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

has  the  least  idea  of  how  he  acted  on  the  stage  of  the 
world,  and  how  he  figures  in  historical  record.  I  had 
lately  been  reading  Muratori's  Annali  d 'Italia.  Here  I 
found  some  (not  very  numerous)  statements  affecting 
Salinguerra  ;  and  I  thought  that  it  might  be  well  for 
the  readers  of  Browning  to  know  what  these  statements 
amount  to,  and  how  far  they  confirm  or  confute  the 
poet's  version  of  the  facts.  I  pointed  out  various  dis- 
crepancies— not  however  invalidating  the  figure  so 
puissantly  limned  by  Browning. 

So  much  for  what  I  wrote  in  this  interval  of  time  ; 
and  next  as  to  what  I  did  in  the  way  of  lecturing. 

I  first  accepted  for  the  spring  of  1875  an  invitation 
to  lecture.  I  had  been  more  than  once  asked  to  do  so 
in  earlier  years  ;  but  had  always  declined,  chiefly  because 
I  felt  quite  uncertain  whether  I  possessed  two  of  the 
most  requisite  qualifications — voice  and  self-confidence. 
In  1874  a  request  came  to  me  from  the  Midland  Insti- 
tute in  Birmingham  :  I  decided  to  accept,  and  see 
whether  I  could  do  the  thing  or  not.  I  selected  as  my 
subject  The  Life  and  Writings  of  Shelley — the  theme  with 
which,  of  all  others,  I  was  well  acquainted  at  that  date. 
I  composed  two  lectures  ;  and  was,  with  my  wife,  very 
hospitably  received  at  Birmingham  by  one  of  the 
directors  of  the  Institute,  Mr.  Charles  E.  Matthews, 
and  his  wife.  Mr.  Matthews  was  a  barrister  and  a  great 
Alpine  climber,  author  of  one  of  the  leading  books  on 
this  topic.  The  evening  came  for  my  first  lecture  ;  and, 
although  I  had  somewhat  distrusted  myself  up  to  the 
last  moment,  I  found  that,  as  soon  as  I  stood  up  before 
an  audience  and  opened  my  mouth,  I  was  wholly  free 
from  nervousness,  and  able  to  do  justice  to  any  faculty 
which  I  possessed  as  a  speaker.  The  lectures  were 


LITERARY  AND  LECTURING  WORK     483 

afterwards  published  in  The  University  Magazine  (the 
same  which  had  heretofore  been  named  The  Dublin 
University  Magazine)^  then  edited  by  a  valued  acquaint- 
ance of  mine,  Mr.  Keningale  Cook.  This  experiment 
as  to  lecturing  was  decisive  ;  and  in  the  sequel  I  felt  no 
hesitation  in  accepting  other  invitations,  if  only  an 
agreement  could  be  effected  as  to  a  subject  within  my 
competence.  Once  or  twice  proposals  failed,  as  this 
•concurrence  of  opinion  was  lacking.  I  gave  the  Shelley 
lectures  in  Newcastle-on-Tyne  and  elsewhere ;  and  after- 
wards wrote  another  brace  of  lectures,  The  Wives  of  'Poets , 
which  I  delivered  in  Newcastle  and  Glasgow.  This  I 
thought  an  interesting  subject  for  investigation  ;  the 
main  purpose  being  to  see  whether  poets,  of  any  period 
and  any  nation,  had  been  happy  or  unhappy  with  their 
wives,  and  what  mould  of  character  in  the  wives  had 
.seemed  to  fit  in  best  with  the  poetic  temperament  in  the 
husbands.  This  second  brace  of  lectures  was  published 
in  The  Atlantic  Monthly. 

Of  some  lectures  which  I  delivered  to  the  Shelley 
Society,  on  topics  connected  with  Shelley  but  not  in- 
cluding the  two  lectures  written  for  Birmingham,  I  have 
said  something  in  my  twenty-third  section.  Almost  the 
last  of  my  lectures  was  upon  Leopardi  at  the  Taylor 
Institution  in  Oxford  in  1891.  The  invitation  to 
lecture  there,  on  some  subject  at  my  choice  bearing  upon 
Italian  literature,  came  to  me  from  the  Rev.  Dr.  (now 
Canon)  Edward  Moore,  Principal  of  St.  Edmund  Hall, 
•one  of  the  curators  of  the  institution. 

My  acquaintance  with  Canon  Moore  dates  back  to 
the  year  1882,  when  he  honoured  me  by  suggesting 
that  I  should  act  along  with  him  and  Professor  Max 
Mttller  as  an  examiner  in  Italian  for  a  competition  at 


484        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

the  Taylor  Institution.  The  Canon  is  generally 
known  to  be  one  of  our  profoundest  scholars  in  Dante 
and  Dantesque  literature,  and  his  labours  have  entitled 
him  to  the  gratitude  of  all  Dante  students,  great  and 
small.  From  Canon  and  Mrs.  Moore  I  received 
abundant  civilities  ;  in  fact  if  I  had  to  name,  among 
the  gentlemen  I  have  known,  the  one  most  distinguished 
by  manly  courtesy,  I  might  have  to  designate  the  Rev. 
Canon  Moore.  The  competitors  on  that  occasion  were- 
extremely  few  ;  they  were  possibly  still  fewer  in  two  later 
instances  when  I  was  again  joined  in  an  examination — 
once  with  Professor  York  Powell,  and  then  for  a  second 
time  with  Canon  Moore.  There  was  also  an  examina- 
tion, not  entailing  absence  from  my  home,  of  female 
students  of  Italian,  in  connexion  with  the  Oxford 
University  Extension  Movement.  In  Professor  York 
Powell  I  found  a  scholar  of  universal  accomplishment, 
and  one  who  took  a  lively  interest  in  most  of  the 
subjects  attractive  to  myself,  including  Walt  Whitman. 
I  saw  him  in  one  or  two  other  instances,  and  only 
regretted  that  these  were  not  more  numerous. 

The  writings  of  Leopardi  had  not  been  at  all  familiar 
to  me  in  youth  :  my  father,  I  assume,  valued  them 
as  high-class  literary  work,  but  he  seldom  referred  to 
them  in  speech,  and  1  never  saw  them  among  his 
belongings.  Perhaps  he  thought  that  Leopardi,  though 
an  Italian  patriot,  was  a  patriot  of  the  class  whose 
writings  tend  towards  abating  rather  than  prompting 
energetic  practical  action.  Somewhere  towards  1874  I 
began  reading  Leopardi,  and  I  at  once  regarded  him  as 
the  most  important  and  consummate  poet  of  Italy  in 
the  nineteenth  century.  His  pessimism  did  not  repel 
me,  though  neither  did  I  subscribe  to  it  as  a  creed  for 


LITERARY  AND  LECTURING  WORK     485 

myself.  Thus,  when  Canon  Moore  asked  me  to  choose 
a  subject  for  an  Oxford  lecture,  I  named  Leopardi,  and 
this  was  at  once  agreed  upon.  I  delivered  my  lecture 
to  a  distinguished  company  of  Oxford  men,  by  whom  it 
was  received  with  apparent  favour.  Leopardi,  besides 
being  an  extreme  pessimist,  was  an  atheist  and  materialist, 
and  I  did  not  scruple  to  say  so  in  as  many  words  to  my 
clerical  and  university  auditors.  I  find,  however,  that 
in  the  printed  version  of  my  discourse  (of  which,  as  it 
happens,  I  never  saw  a  proof)  that  phrase  has  dis- 
appeared, though  the  general  and  pronounced  hetero- 
doxy of  the  poet  is  still  fully  apparent.  The  lecture 
stands  printed  in  a  volume  issued  from  the  Clarendon 
Press  in  1900 — Studies  in  European  Literature,  being  the 
Taylorian  Lectures  1889-1899.  My  fellow-lecturers  form 
an  eminent  company — Professor  Dowden,  Pater,  T.  W. 
Rolleston,  Mallarme",  A.  Morel-Fatio,  H.  R.  F.  Brown, 
Paul  Bourget,  Professor  Herford,  H.  Butler  Clarke, 
and  Professor  Ker. 

This  must  have  been  my  last  performance  as  a 
lecturer  ;  except  that  I  followed  up  my  discourse  upon 
Leopardi  for  Oxford  by  another  (previously  named)  on 
Leopardi's  poetry  as  related  to  Shelley's,  for  the  Shelley 
Society. 

Speaking  in  general  terms,  the  audiences  for  my 
lectures  have  always  been  more  or  less  sympathetic  :  I 
never  had  the  mortification  of  finding  them  strictly  glum 
or  manifestly  bored.  Yet  I  have  not  encountered  any- 
where in  England  an  amount  of  rapid  and  keen 
responsiveness  equal  to  that  which  greeted  me  in 
Scotland — at  Glasgow.  This  is,  I  apprehend,  a  very 
general  experience.  A  Scottish  audience  has  more 
appetence  than  an  English  one  for  the  things  of  the 


486        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

intellect,  and  more  of  warm  impulse  in  demonstrating 
its  feelings.  In  Glasgow  my  hosts  were  Professor  and 
Mrs.  John  Nichol,  both  of  them  exceedingly  friendly 
and  agreeable.  The  Professor  has  left  some  dramatic 
poetry  entitled  to  high  respect,  and  as  a  biographer  on  a 
condensed  scale  I  barely  know  his  equal — witness  his 
accounts  of  Burns  and  of  Byron. 


XXIX 

FAMILY   INTIMATES 
IN   OUR   MARRIED    LIFE 

A  N  ample  number  of  persons,  whom  I  have  as  yet 
mentioned  little  or  not  at  all,  were  known  to  me 
during  the  twenty  years  of  my  married  life,  April  1874 
to  April  1894  ;  some  of  them,  but  comparatively  few, 
had  been  of  my  own  acquaintance  at  an  earlier  date.  I 
will  first  say  something  of  those  with  whom  my  wife 
came  into  frequent  and  familiar  contact — those  whom 
we  could  chiefly  class  as  "  family  friends."  In  using 
this  phrase  I  do  not,  of  course,  exclude  some  other 
family  friends  whose  intimacy  in  our  household  came 
either  from  the  Brown  connexion  or  from  the  Rossetti 
connexion,  and  who  have  been  already  referred  to. 

It  was  in  1876  that  we  first  met  Mr.  George  T. 
Robinson  and  his  daughter  Mary  (now  Madame 
Duclaux)  in  a  company  got  together  (if  I  remember 
right)  to  meet  Professor  David  Masson,  my  old  friend, 
in  one  of  his  visits  to  London  from  Edinburgh  Univer- 
sity. Mr.  Robinson  was  an  architect,  in  close  relation 
with  the  large  business  firm  of  Trollope  &  Co.  He  was 
besides  an  art-critic,  and  author  of  an  interesting  book 
which  I  had  read  aforetime,  The  Betrayal  of  Metzy  made 
up  from  newspaper  correspondence  which  he  had  con- 
ducted in  1870;  in  personal  intercourse,  an  agreeable, 
sensible,  and  lively- witted  man.  The  Betrayal  of  Metz 

487 


488        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

was  I  believe  the  first  publication — at  any  rate  in 
England — which  openly  and  explicitly  charged  Marshal 
Bazaine  as  traitorous.  Mr.  Robinson  was  one  of  those 
men  who  believe  themselves  to  have  seen  "the  great 
sea-serpent."  He  once  gave  me  the  details  of  this 
experience,  and  I  thought  them  not  lightly  to  be  set 
aside  ;  I  regret  that  they  no  longer  dwell  in  my  memory. 
Miss  Robinson,  then  still  in  her  teens,  was  as  bright 
as  could  be,  and  highly  sympathetic  in  matters  of  art 
and  literature  interesting  to  myself.  This  was  before 
the  publication  (1878)  of  her  first  volume  of  poems, 
A  Handful  of  Honeysuckle^  which  left  no  doubt  of  her 
exceptional  gifts.  Soon  afterwards  we  knew  also  Mrs. 
and  Miss  Mabel  Robinson,  and  from  the  whole  family 
we  received  constant  marks  of  the  warmest  kindness  and 
regard.  It  was  at  our  house  that  Miss  Robinson  first 
met  her  future  husband  M.  James  Darmesteter,  the 
great  oriental  scholar  :  he  had  come  over  from  Paris,  to 
attend  the  Shelley  concert  of  which  I  previously  made 
mention.  In  the  summer  of  1888  she  was  busy  in 
London  in  preparations  for  her  wedding  ;  and  yet,  with 
a  womanly  glow  of  feeling  which  I  shall  not  forget,  she 
went  down  for  some  weeks  to  Worthing,  to  give  com- 
panionship and  solace  to  my  wife,  then  suffering  much 
from  a  carbuncle  after  seeing  our  eldest  daughter  through 
her  very  dangerous  illness.  But  this  is  only  one  instance 
out  of  many  in  which  this  distinguished  lady's  friendship 
for  all  of  us  has  been  conspicuous.  I  had  the  pleasure 
of  dedicating  to  her  one  of  my  publications,  Ruskin, 
Rossetti,  Pneraphaelitism.  M.  Darmesteter,  of  Hebrew- 
French  nationality,  had  a  singularly  piercing  intellect 
and  great  refinement  of  feeling  in  a  weakly  bodily  frame  ; 
he  first  became  known  to  us  as  having  published  some- 


FAMILY   INTIMATES  489 

thing  in  generous  appreciation  of  Oliver  Madox  Brown. 
He  died  in  October  1894,  midway  between  my  own 
losses  in  the  death  of  my  wife  and  of  my  sister  Christina. 
Mr.  Robinson  succumbed  to  a  very  sudden  attack  of 
illness  in  1897. 

Miss  Mabel  Robinson,  besides  some  good  work  as  a 
novelist,  produced  several  years  ago  a  brief  History  of 
Ireland,  which  brought  her  much  into  contact  with  mem- 
bers of  the  advanced  Irish  party.  She  sympathized 
vigorously  with  them,  as  also  did  I.  At  the  hospitable 
Robinson  house  I  have  met  on  various  occasions  Mr. 
John  Dillon  and  Messrs.  Timothy  and  Maurice  Healy. 
My  belief  is  that,  if  there  is  one  man  in  public  life  more 
distinguished  than  others  by  chivalry  of  feeling  and  high 
motive,  that  man  is  Mr.  Dillon.  Mr.  Timothy  Healy, 
the  inimitable  "  Tim  "  of  the  present  day,  was  always, 
within  my  observation,  self-possessed  and  undemonstra- 
tive in  a  marked  degree,  and  as  full  of  reason  as  of 
matter  in  his  remarks  upon  political  affairs.  He  seems 
to  be  regarded  as  "  impracticable  " — a  very  convenient 
word  to  be  used  by  people  who  dislike  a  particular  line 
of  procedure  ;  and  yet,  if  I  may  trust  my  own  impres- 
sions, he  might  have  been  capable  of  leading  the  Irish 
Nationalists  (sua  si  bona  ndrinf)  to  success  after  the 
enforced  retirement  of  the  potent  Parnell. 

The  Robinsons  saw  a  great  deal  of  company,  including 
several  persons  of  eminence.  I  have  met  in  their  house 
Mrs.  J.  R.  Green,  the  widow  of  the  historian,  and  her- 
self historian  of  Henry  II  ;  Mr.  George  Moore  the 
novelist,  who  has  also  been  welcomed  to  our  own  house  ; 
Mr.  Sargent  the  pre-eminent  portrait  painter  (I  was  glad 
to  find  him  a  hearty  admirer  of  my  brother's  work)  ; 
Miss  Violet  Paget,  who  writes  under  the  name  of  Vernon 


ii. 


490        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

Lee,  and  whom  I  have  pretty  often  re-encountered,  both 
in  London  and  in  Florence.  In  Paris  in  1889,  in  the 
house  of  M.  and  Madame  Darmesteter,  I  had  the  great 
satisfaction  of  seeing  four  famous  Frenchmen — Taine, 
Sully-Prudhomme,  Paul  Bourget,  and  Gaston  Paris  with 
his  wife.  It  would  be  in  vain  to  attempt  to  give  any 
particulars  about  so  many  celebrities,  some  of  whom  I 
met  only  once  ;  I  felt  not  slightly  impressed  by  the 
suavity  and  charm  of  manner  of  that  profound  scholar 
M.  Gaston  Paris,  snatched  from  us  by  death  all  too  soon 
in  1903.  Is  there  any  one  more  attractive  than  a  thor- 
oughly cultivated  and  high-minded  Frenchman  ? 

There  is  perhaps  no  man  living  for  whom  I  entertain 
a  warmer  regard  than  for  Mr.  Justin  McCarthy,  who 
became  the  leader  of  the  Irish  party  in  Parliament  in 
succession  to  Parnell.  I  met  him  often  in  the  Robinson 
house,  but  had  known  him  before  then,  and  he  had 
known  Ford  and  Oliver  Madox  Brown  (both  of  whom 
he  liked  and  admired  with  exceptional  heartiness)  prior 
to  my  making  his  acquaintance.  Of  Mr.  McCarthy's 
multifarious  and  brilliant  work  in  literature  and  journal- 
ism, in  romance  and  history,  I  need  not  speak.  In  per- 
sonal intercourse  no  one  could  exceed  him  in  simple 
courtesy  of  address,  in  readiness  to  oblige,  in  manifest 
but  never-obtruded  superiority  of  character,  faculty,  and 
attainment.  Fine  intellect,  ardent  patriot,  accomplished 
gentleman,  Justin  McCarthy  is  an  honour  to  his  party 
and  his  nation.  I  was  acquainted  also  with  Mrs. 
McCarthy  (who  died  towards  1880),  the  sweet-natured 
Miss  Charlotte  McCarthy,  and  Mr.  Justin  Huntly 
McCarthy — who  was,  however,  much  less  well  known  to 
me  than  his  father.  In  this  house  I  saw  something  of 
Mr.  Frank  Hugh  O'Donnell,  then  one  of  the  more 


FAMILY   INTIMATES  491 

prominent  Irish  members  of  Parliament.  There  was 
also  McCarthy's  brother-in-law  Mr.  William  Cronin, 
who  has  become  an  authority  on  the  works  of  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds.  This  gentleman  was  slightly  known  to  me 
in  official  life,  as  he  was  a  collector  of  Inland  Revenue  at 
Nottingham,  and  afterwards  in  London  ;  and  he  showed 
much  polite  attention  to  Madox  Brown  when  occupied, 
not  far  from  Nottingham,  upon  his  picture  of  Byron  and 
Mary  Chaworth. 

A  family  very  well  acquainted  with  the  Browns  for 
some  few  years  preceding  my  marriage  was  that  of  Sir 
Thomas  Duffus  Hardy,  the  Deputy  Keeper  of  the 
Records,  with  his  wife  and  daughter.  Of  Sir  Thomas 
I  saw  but  little — he  seemed  remarkably  kindly  and 
young-hearted,  reminding  me  so  far  of  Dr.  Lushington 
of  the  Admiralty  Court.  His  decease  ensued  not  long 
after  my  marriage.  Lady  and  Miss  (Iza)  Hardy, 
both  of  them  novelists,  were  very  warmly  attached 
to  my  wife.  The  Jeaffreson  family — Mr.  John  Cordy 
Jeaffreson  with  his  wife  and  daughter — were  extremely 
intimate  with  the  Hardys,  sometimes  housed  along  with 
them.  They  were  very  good  friends  of  ours,  and  Mr. 
Jeaffreson  was  particularly  kind  in  promoting  my  wife's 
researches  when  she  was  writing  her  Memoir  of  Mary 
Shelley.  Another  lady  who  was  an  attached  friend  of  my 
wife  was  Mrs.  Holman-Hunt ;  some  long  intervals 
however  elapsed  when,  owing  to  absence  from  England 
or  other  circumstances,  they  were  prevented  from  meet- 
ing. There  was  also  Miss  Mary  Carmichael,  a  profes- 
sional musician,  who  had  won  my  wife's  heart  by  setting 
to  music  some  of  the  songs  of  Oliver  Brown. 

I  have  made  some  previous  mention  of  the  Greek 
families  whom  we  knew  in  London.  Foremost  among 


492        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

these  was  the  Spartali  family,  including  the  lady  who  in 
1871  became  Mrs.  Stillman,  the  elder  of  two  strikingly 
beautiful  daughters,  Marie  and  Christine  (practically 
the  same  baptismal  names  as  those  of  my  own  two 
sisters).  Christine,  who  appears  in  Whistler's  grand 
painting  La  Princesse  du  Palais  de  Porcelaine^  became  the 
Comtesse  Edmond  de  Cahen,  and,  after  much  suffering 
from  a  strange  cataleptical  malady,  died  many  years  ago. 
Marie  (Mrs.  Stillman)  had  from  an  early  age  a  great 
love  and  aptitude  for  pictorial  art.  She  studied  under 
Madox  Brown  along  with  his  son  and  two  daughters, 
and  was  the  most  intimate  and  the  most  beloved  of  all 
Lucy's  female  friends,  both  before  and  after  marriage. 
I  will  not  here  renew  my  panegyric  of  this  most 
gracious,  gifted,  and  admirable  lady  :  she  neither  needs 
it  nor  likes  it.  My  daughters  and  myself  continue  to 
enjoy  the  privilege  of  her  friendship.  There  was  like- 
wise the  Laskaridi  family,  of  which  one  member,  Mrs. 
Petrici,  knew  my  wife  extremely  well,  and  often  relieved 
some  hour  of  depression  by  lively  and  pointed  talk. 

Mr.  Moncure  Con  way  had  been  known  to  me  several 
years  before  my  marriage.  I  first  met  him,  perhaps  in 
1863,  in  the  house  of  Bell  Scott.  He  interested  me  in 
various  ways  :  not  least  as  being  a  Virginian  who  had 
espoused  the  Abolitionist  cause,  and  who  had  for  con- 
science' sake,  on  the  outbreak  of  the  War  of  Secession, 
migrated  from  the  United  States  to  England  to  diffuse 
his  principles.  Mr.  Conway  and  his  wife  were  on 
pleasant  terms  with  Lucy  and  the  rest  of  us.  Once  and 
again  he  did  me  some  very  acceptable  service  in  con- 
nexion with  American  publishing,  and  we  enjoyed  his 
open-i  )ded  and  telling  conversation,  as  well  as  the  placid 
but  in  Jb  way  phlegmatic  amiability  of  Mrs.  Conway.  The 


FAMILY   INTIMATES  493 

gifts  of  Mr.  Conway  as  a  public  speaker  are  well  recog- 
nized :  he  consented  to  exercise  them  at  the  open  graves 
of  Oliver  Brown  in  1874  and  of  Madox  Brown  in  1893. 
Shortly  after  the  question  was  started  of  commission- 
ing Madox  Brown  to  execute  the  mural  paintings  in  the 
townhall  of  Manchester,  he  made  the  acquaintance  in 
that  city  of  Mr.  Charles  Rowley,  who  was  a  member  of 
the  corporation,  and  in  business  as  a  frame-maker  and 
print-seller.  Soon  we  were  all  very  intimate  with  Mr. 
Rowley  and  his  wife.  I  saw  also  his  father  and  mother, 
a  most  worthy  old  couple  who  had  made  their  way 
in  life  from  very  humble  beginnings  by  steady  per- 
sistence in  well-doing.  Mr.  Charles  Rowley  has  a  quick 
eye  for  what  is  good  in  art  and  literature,  and  a  bound- 
less willingness,  I  may  say  a  genius,  for  exerting  himself 
for  the  benefit  of  others.  I  have  before  had  occasion  to 
mention  his  splendid  foundation,  the  Ancoats  Brother- 
hood. To  make  himself  uncomfortable  in  order  to 
promote  the  comfort  of  his  fellow-citizens  of  the  work- 
ing-class appears  to  be  his  ideal  :  and,  what  is  better,  he 
does  not  feel  himself  to  be  uncomfortable,  but  the 
cheeriest  of  the  cheery — here,  there,  and  everywhere,  in 
the  good  cause.  As  a  practical  philanthropist  he  is 
worthy  to  be,  and  is,  the  friend  of  Kropotkin  :  he 
makes  no  fuss,  and  pulls  no  long  faces.  With  men  of 
this  order  my  line  in  life  has  seldom  brought  me  in 
contact.  I  feel  proud  whenever  it  happens  to  me  to 
grasp  Mr.  Rowley  by  the  hand,  and  he  gives  a  vigorous 
Lancashire  grip  in  return.  Another  Manchester  man 
whom  Madox  Brown  met  rather  frequently,  and  I  two 
or  three  times,  was  Edwin  Waugh,  the  poet  in  Lanca- 
shire dialect ;  he  was  vivacious  and  sociable — I  under- 
stood indeed  somewhat  convivial. 


494        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

It  was  in  1890  that  I  received  a  letter  from  Mr. 
William  Money  Hardinge  asking  me  to  look  at  some- 
thing which  he  had  written  concerning  my  brother.  This 
was  soon  afterwards  published  in  Temple  Bar  as  A  Note 
on  the  Louvre-sonnets  of  Rossetti.  Mr.  Hardinge  had  seen 
my  brother  once  or  twice  through  the  introduction  of 
Louisa  Lady  Ashburton.  I  found  his  article  to  be  both 
interesting  and  discerning,  and  have  since  then  perused 
other  praiseworthy  writings  of  his.  We  saw  him  pretty 
often,  and  always  with  satisfaction.  My  wife,  for 
whom  he  exhibited  a  marked  regard,  took  great  pleasure 
in  his  conversation,  and  was  readier  in  confiding  to  him 
than  to  almost  any  one  else  any  projects  or  performances 
of  her  own  in  art  or  in  literature.  In  her  will  she 
bequeathed  to  him  for  his  lifetime  (it  will  afterwards  go 
to  our  daughter  Mary)  her  leading  water-colour  picture 
of  Romeo  and  Juliet^  which,  although  purchased  by 
some  one  at  the  time  of  its  being  exhibited,  had  at  a 
recent  date  been  bought  back  by  herself.  Mr.  Hardinge 
wrote  a  gratifying  little  memoir  of  her,  published  in 
1894  in  The  Magazine  of  Art.  In  1902,  when  he  got 
together  several  works  by  or  relating  to  Dante  Rossetti 
shown  at  Leighton  House,  the  Romeo  and  Juliet  figured 
among  them.  It  has  also  been  in  one  of  the  Guildhall 
Exhibitions. 

Our  family-connexion  with  Mrs.  HuefFer  and  her 
husband  brought  to  our  knowledge  a  few  members  of 
the  numerous  HuefFer  race,  all  of  them  foreign  residents  : 
I  have  however  seen  them  but  rarely.  One  brother  was 
Professor  Hermann  HuefFer,  a  distinguished  historical 
scholar,  now  deceased.  I  had  a  great  liking  for  Her- 
mann, and  regretted  to  learn  after  some  few  years  that 
he  had  lost  his  sight. 


XXX 
OTHER  ACQUAINTANCES,  1874  TO  1893 

CMALL  was  the  number  of  artists,  not  known  to  me 
in  previous  years,  of  whom  I  saw  something  during 
my  married  life  ;  far  more  considerable  the  number  of 
literary  people.     I  will  speak  first  of  the  former  class. 

In  January  1875  Madox  Brown  had  to  deliver  some 
lectures  in  Edinburgh.  With  his  wife  and  our  two 
selves,  a  small  family-party  was  made  up.  Not  one  of 
us  was  personally  acquainted  with  the  distinguished 
painter  Sir  Joseph  Noel  Paton,  the  Queen's  Limner  in 
Scotland,  who  (as  it  happened)  was  among  the  most 
-strenuous  and  generous  admirers  of  Dante  Rossetti's 
work :  but  Brown,  as  a  brother  artist  well  known  to 
Paton  by  reputation,  felt  warranted  in  calling  upon  him, 
in  company  with  the  rest  of  us.  I  had  from  a  very 
youthful  age  admired  the  work  of  Paton  up  to  a  certain 
point,  and  not  beyond  that ;  finding  it  thoughtful,  well- 
invented,  dignified,  skilfully  handled,  yet  not  absolutely 
gifted  :  on  the  mental  side  it  tends  to  genius,  but  it  has 
not  the  heart  of  genius  beating  against  its  ribs.  Sir 
Joseph  Paton  was  a  tall  and  very  fine-looking  man :  he 
received  us  with  a  stately  courtesy,  in  which  some 
degree  of  shyness  seemed  to  be  lurking.  He  ex- 
pressed himself  with  much  modesty  in  respect  to  his 
own  performances,  with  warm  recognition  of  those  of 

495 


496        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

Madox  Brown.  He  had  a  handsome  well-kept  house> 
comprising  a  very  noticeable  collection  of  armour.  I 
should  have  wished  to  see  more  of  this  eminent  man ; 
but  our  stay  in  Edinburgh  was  short,  and  no  second 
interview  ensued. 

Mr.  Walter  Crane  and  his  wife  were  fairly  well  known 
to  us :  we  enjoyed  the  many  admirable  qualities  of  his 
art,  and  sympathized  in  the  bold  tone  of  his  social 
opinions.  A  big  garden  with  an  immense  dog  added  to 
the  attractions  of  our  occasional  visits  to  his  house.  Of 
all  the  artists  now  living  in  England,  there  can  barely  be 
one  or  two  who  have  exercised  so  widely  varied  and  so 
beneficial  an  influence  as  Mr.  Crane  on  art-development 
— an  influence  which  has  spread,  and  continues  spreading, 
on  the  Continent  as  well. 

Mr.  Harold  Rathbone,  a  member  of  a  Liverpool 
family  which  took  a  leading  part  in  regulating  art- 
matters  in  that  locality,  has  for  some  years  past  been  at 
the  head  of  the  Delia  Robbia  Works  at  Birkenhead.  In 
early  youth,  towards  1876,  he  sought  and  obtained 
permission  to  study  painting  under  Madox  Brown. 
His  first  picture,  Joan  of  Arc  receiving  the  Eucharist  in  a 
Village  Church^  appeared  to  me  quite  right  in  feeling,, 
and  otherwise  of  superior  promise  ;  he  also  later  on 
executed  a  good  full-length  portrait,  in  pastels,  of  Miss 
Mathilde  Blind.  For  several  years  past  his  energies,, 
though  not  withdrawn  from  fine  art,  have  been  diverted 
from  the  production  of  pictures.  Owing  partly  to  his 
close  connexion  with  Madox  Brown,  we  saw  a  good 
deal  of  Mr.  Rathbone,  and  appreciated  the  frank  and 
vivacious  tone  of  his  character.  He  is  not  addicted  to 
hiding  lights  under  bushels,  and  not  unfrequently  starts 
or  assists  some  object  conducive  to  the  advantage  of  art. 


OTHER   ACQUAINTANCES  497 

My  brother  in  1879  took  a  dislike  to  Mr.  Rathbone's 
late  father  (a  gentleman  whom  1  met  once  or  twice) 
owing  to  a  report — 1  understand,  a  mis-report — of 
something  which  he  had  said  at  a  lecture  concerning 
Dante  Rossetti's  poetry.  In  1881,  after  a  reasonable 
explanation,  the  breach  was  healed.  This  statement 
may  throw  some  light  upon  a  passage  or  two  in 
Rossetti's  Family  Letters. 

At  a  very  early  age,  perhaps  as  far  back  as  1850,  I 
met  occasionally  a  sculptor  named  S.  J.  B.  Haydon  :  he 
was  afterwards  a  solicitor,  and  finally  a  print-seller  at 
Parkside,  Knightsbridge.  I  re-encountered  him  various 
times  in  my  brother's  studio,  between  1878  and  1881. 
Dante  Gabriel  liked  his  company,  and  his  detailed 
acquaintance  with  British  art-work  of  the  preceding 
half-century.  He  etched  a  plate,  now  in  my  possession, 
from  Rossetti's  design  of  Hamlet  and  Ophelia:  a  repro- 
duction less  noticeable  for  delicacy  than  for  resemblance 
and  force.  It  has  as  yet  remained  unpublished. 

I  now  come  to  the  literary  personages.  My  early 
extreme  admiration  for  the  Festus  of  Philip  James 
Bailey  had  always  made  me  wishful  to  see  the  author 
in  the  flesh.  In  1875  I  wrote  for  Macmillatis  Magazine 
an  article  entitled  William  Bell  Scott  and  Modern  British 
Poetry;  being  desirous  to  promote  the  repute  of  my  old 
friend,  who  had  recently  brought  out  a  collected  and 
condensed  edition  of  his  poems  in  a  handsome  form. 
In  this  article  I  spoke  of  Festus — a  poem  as  to  which  I 
was  much  less  enthusiastic  in  1875  tnan  ^  ^ac^  been  *n 
1848.  I  expressed  (substantially)  the  opinion  that 
FestuSy  while  it  embodies  much  stately  and  exalted 
poetic  material,  is  open  likewise  to  considerable  stric- 
ture, and  has  in  its  later  issues  been  swollen  and  diluted 


498        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

with  inferior  accretions  beyond  all  reason.  Hereupon 
Mr.  Bailey  wrote  me  a  courteous  letter  showing  that  he 
considered  himself  to  be  not  quite  adequately  estimated 
in  my  paper.  I  replied  in  a  conciliatory  tone,  and  in 
the  spirit  of  an  admirer,  which  I  always  had  been,  and 
still  was  and  am.  Soon  afterwards  the  poet  favoured 
me  with  a  call  at  Somerset  House.  His  appearance 
was  prepossessing  in  the  highest  degree  :  a  handsome 
well-made  man,  with  a  fine  countenance  full  of  mascu- 
line solidity  and  superiority,  and  a  beautiful  crop  of 
grizzled  hair.  His  address  was  as  winning  as  his 
person.  I  never  met  a  man  whom  I  took  to  more 
at  first  sight  ;  and  he  seemed  satisfied  that  what  I  had 
written  had  been  simply  the  expression  of  a  sincere 
opinion,  by  no  means  inconsistent  with  genuine  respect 
and  homage  to  one  of  the  illustrious  poems  of  the 
century.  In  1877  Mr.  Bailey  with  his  wife,  passed  an 
evening  in  our  house,  among  other  friends  :  he  pre- 
sented me  with  a  new  edition  of  Festus,  then  just 
published.  I  had  not  the  advantage  of  seeing  him 
again  :  his  ordinary  residence  at  that  time  was  in  the 
Isle  of  Jersey,  and,  though  he  soon  afterwards  settled  in 
England,  it  was  far  away  from  London. 

Since  Bailey's  death  in  1902  I  have  once  more  under- 
taken to  read  Festus  through  ;  being  curious  to  see  what 
amount  of  foundation  there  was  for  the  fervency  with 
which  my  brother  and  I  (amid  many  other  poetic  readers) 
regarded  it  towards  1848,  and  what  may  be  its  probable 
ultimate  position  among  British  poems.  I  read  the 
volume  which  Bailey  gave  me,  and  which,  I  have  no 
doubt,  is  much  less  satisfactory,  chiefly  because  much 
bigger,  than  the  earlier  form  of  the  work.  It  runs  on 
to  688  closely  printed  pages,  or  something  like  34,000 


OTHER  ACQUAINTANCES  499 

lines  of  verse.  I  find  in  Festus  many  noble  ideas  nobly 
and  superbly  expressed — even  more  so  than  in  reminis- 
cence I  had  supposed  ;  a  plethora  of  grand  images  and 
pictorial  phrase  ;  oracular  oratory  ;  a  striking  though 
sometimes  abnormal  mastery  of  the  resources  of  verse  ; 
a  frame  of  mind  of  spacious  and  sublimated  benevolence. 
In  the  comparatively  few  scenes  where  a  tincture  of 
natural  sprightliness  is  admissible,  the  rudiments  of  it 
are  not  deficient.  The  scheme  of  the  poem — universal 
salvation  ushered  in  by  the  end  of  "  the  world  and  all 
its  worlds  " — is  perhaps  the  most  ambitious  ever  adven- 
tured since  the  Comedia  of  Dante.  That  the  poem  takes 
the  dramatic  form  where  there  is  no  possibility  of  real 
drama  need  not  be  deemed  a  fault  ;  for  the  narrative 
form  would  seem  still  less  appropriate.  The  failure 
consists  in  this — that  the  work,  considered  as  a  whole,  is 
a  colossal  monotony.  A  poem  which  is  saturated  with 
the  doctrine  of  universalism  passes  out  of  the  quality 
of  poem  into  that  of  sermonic  speculation.  The  Devil, 
as  soon  as  we  are  told  that  he  is  to  be  finally  saved,  and 
is  meanwhile  an  instrument  in  the  hands  of  the  Deity 
for  good,  ceases  to  be  the  Devil,  and  in  especial  ceases 
to  be  an  entity  in  drama.  In  its  present  augmented 
form,  and  as  a  single  continuous  poem,  Festus^  I  take  it, 
cannot  be  viable  (as  the  French  say).  The  first  thing  to 
be  done  in  order  to  give  it  a  proper  chance  would  be 
to  bring  it  back  to  its  original  form  and  dimensions,  as 
published  in  1839  or  soon  afterwards.  It  would  be  a 
better  poem,  and  above  all  a  less  daunting  one :  for 
34,000  verses,  all  about  God,  angels,  the  devil,  space, 
the  starry  heavens,  the  last  man,  the  end  of  the  world, 
the  New  Jerusalem,  and  universal  bliss,  with  some 
intermittences  of  love-making  and  wine-bibbing  and 


500        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

song-singing,  are  not  things  to  be  tackled  by  the  average 
human  being.  It  might  be  urged  that  such  a  reissue 
would  be  an  outrage  to  the  memory  of  the  author,  who 
elected  to  alter  and  amplify  his  poem :  but  here  I  do  not 
agree  ;  to  reprint  a  poem  in  its  first  shape,  and  leave  to 
the  reader  the  option  of  perusing  this  first  or  a  later  one, 
is  not  an  outrage.  Festus,  whatever  its  blemishes,  is  one 
of  the  landmarks  of  British  poetry  in  the  nineteenth 
century  ;  it  ought  to  be  presented  in  such  a  guise  that  it 
could  be  read  in  the  twentieth. 

James  Thomson,  the  author  of  The  City  of  Dreadful 
Night  and  several  other  fine  poems  (published  under 
the  initials  B.  V.),  was  a  writer  of  whose  name  or  initials 
I  had  never  heard  until  in  February  1872  I  received 
by  post  a  copy  of  his  pathetic  oriental  poem  Weddah  and 
Om  el  Bonain,  in  a  number  of  the  National  Reformer. 
I  read  it,  and  so  did  my  brother  immediately  after- 
wards, and  we  both  agreed  in  deeming  it  remarkable. 
I  then  wrote  to  B.V.  to  say  as  much.  Such  particulars 
as  I  could  give  about  him  appear  passim  in  The  Life  of 
James  Thomson  by  Mr.  H.  S.  Salt  (1889),  so  I  curtail 
them  here.  Some  correspondence  ensued ;  and  in 
April  1873,  after  his  return  from  a  business-expedition 
to  the  Rocky  Mountains,  Thomson  called  upon  me 
by  appointment  in  Endsleigh  Gardens.  During  my 
married  life  my  wife  as  well  as  myself  was  wishful  to 
cultivate  his  acquaintance,  and  he  was  in  our  house 
some  half-dozen  times,  meeting  friends  at  dinner 
once  or  twice.  On  one  of  these  occasions  Madox 
Brown  said  that  Thomson's  conversation  was  "better 
than  Swinburne's  "  :  this  was  a  decided  mistake,  but 
it  suffices  to  show  that  there  was  plenty  to  be  got 
out  of  Thomson,  both  interesting  and  pleasant,  in  the 


OTHER   ACQUAINTANCES  501 

ivay  of  talk.  A  later  dinner-invitation  from  us  was 
accepted  by  the  poet ;  but  he  neither  came  nor 
-explained,  and  soon  afterwards  we  had  too  good 
reason  for  understanding  that  he  had  been  kept  away 
by  one  of  his  recurrent  drinking-bouts.  These 
were  the  misfortune,  the  curse,  and  finally  the  des- 
truction, of  poor  Thomson.  His  case  might  truly 
be  regarded  as  one  of  dipsomania,  a  frenzy  which,  when 
it  came  upon  him,  was  beyond  control.  He  died  in 
June  1882  in  University  Hospital,  to  which  he  had 
been  removed  in  a  hopeless  condition  from  the  lodgings 
•of  Philip  Marston.  Thomson  was  a  devout  admirer 
of  Leopardi,  and  shared  his  atheism,  materialism,  and 
pessimism.  I  sincerely  liked  him  :  he  was  a  fine  poet 
and  writer,  and,  when  his  own  master,  a  fine  fellow. 
The  City  of  Dreadful  Night  is  assuredly  more  than 
sufficient  to  show  that  he  was  a  pessimist :  but  the 
prevalent  opinion  that  this  very  striking  poem  was 
intended  by  its  author  to  shadow  forth  the  general  and 
permanent  condition  of  human  life  is  an  error.  It  was 
intended  to  represent  a  mood  of  mind — the  view  of 
human  life  which  clutches  a  pessimist  in  a  fit  of  black 
hypochondria,  and  which  for  the  nonce  he  finds  it 
impossible  to  throw  off. 

Mr.  Salt,  the  biographer  of  Thomson,  is  known  to 
me,  more  especially  as  having  been  my  colleague  on  the 
Committee  of  the  Shelley  Society.  He  is  a  high- 
thinking  man,  and  has  done  good  service  to  the  memory 
of  Shelley  by  contending,  and  indeed  demonstrating, 
that  he  was  not  a  vague  dreamer,  but  a  strenuous  leader 
of  modern  thought  in  various  paths  which  since  his 
time  have  been  more  and  more  actively  explored,  and 
found  to  be  more  or  less  the  right  ones.  Mr.  Salt 


502        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

belongs  to  the  party  of  advanced  "  humanitarianism "* 
(weighted  with  too  long  and  stilted  a  name),  which 
seems  to  me  to  push  some  matters  rather  to  an  extreme,, 
but  with  the  best  intentions  and  some  good  results. 

Every  now  and  then  we  were  in  the  society  of  Mrs. 
Augusta  Webster,  the  poetess,  with  her  husband  and 
daughter.  Mrs.  Webster's  chief  excellence,  it  appears 
to  me,  is  in  drama,  though  some  of  her  poems  in  a 
different  form  are  intellectual  and  able  work.  Her 
tragedy  entitled  The  Sentence  (where  Caligula  is  the 
leading  personage)  is  so  fine  that  I  hardly  discern  where 
its  superior  is  to  be  sought  since  the  time  of  Shakespear : 
another  exceptionally  good  play  is  named  In  a  Day.. 
Apart  from  authorship,  Mrs.  Webster  was  one  of  the 
best  of  women.  Her  countenance  was  not  specially 
remarkable  :  it  was  that  of  a  highly  sensible  lady,  of  the 
practical  domestic  type ;  lit  up  by  a  fine  pair  of  eyes,. 
and  crowned  by  beautiful  silky  crisped  yellow  hair. 
There  was  not  an  atom  of  affectation  or  pretension  about 
her :  her  conversation  was  marked  by  thought  and 
solidity,  without  gush  or  finessing,  and  her  demeanour 
was  eminently  straightforward,  frank,  and  kindly.  If" 
all  literary  and  independent-minded  ladies  were  like 
Mrs.  Webster,  the  talk  about  "the  shrieking  sisterhood  " 
and  the  unsexed  blue-stocking  would  soon  die  out,  or 
stand  confessed  as  a  silly  and  malicious  travesty  of  the 
truth.  Since  the  death  of  this  distinguished  authoress 
I  was  invited  by  Mr.  Webster  to  write  some  prefatory 
words  for  her  touching  little  volume  of  verse,  Mother 
and  Daughter^  published  in  1895;  and  I  more  than 
willingly  complied,  taking  occasion  to  enforce  the  merits 
of  The  Sentence^  which,  besides  its  poetic  value,  would 
make  an  excellent  acting-play.  Were  it  translated  into 


OTHER   ACQUAINTANCES  503 

French,  a  French  manager  and  audience  might  probably 
reach  the  same  conclusion,  and  cast  shame  upon  British 
backwardness. 

Of  Mr.  Hall  Caine  I  have  had  occasion  to  speak  in 
some  detail  in  my  Memoir  of  Dante  Rossettiy  with  whom 
he  was  domesticated  from  the  middle  of  1881  till  the 
moment  of  my  brother's  death.  He  had  begun  in  1879 
corresponding  with  Dante  Gabriel  from  Liverpool ;  we 
first  saw  him  face  to  face  in  the  autumn  of  1880,  when 
his  age  was  barely  twenty-seven.  From  1881  up  to 
some  few  months  following  my  brother's  decease  I  knew 
Mr.  Caine  intimately ;  since  then,  very  little  save  by 
casual  correspondence.  While  I  knew  him,  he  was- 
evidently  a  young  man  of  superior  talents,  minded  to 
make  them  fully  available  for  establishing  a  literary 
position,  and  not  alien  from  discerning  that  some  people 
have  got  beams  in  their  eyes :  it  never  occurred  to  me 
however  that  he  had  in  him  the  rudiments  of  a  romancist 
of  world-wide  repute.  His  turn  seemed  to  be  more 
towards  critical  than  towards  inventive  work.  I  valued 
Mr.  Caine  for  ability  and  earnestness,  and  for  the  many 
friendly  services  which,  not  without  serious  interruption 
to  his  own  pursuits,  he  rendered  to  my  invalided 
brother.  This  gentleman,  since  he  achieved  salient 
literary  success,  with  the  material  advantages  thereto 
pertaining,  seems  to  be  regarded  in  some  quarters  as 
a  self-assertive  and  spoiled  child  of  fortune.  As  I 
have  not  during  that  period  been  with  him,  I  cannot 
bear  my  personal  witness  either  negatively  or  affirm- 
atively: I  can  but  say  that,  if  the  charge  is  true,  the 
Hall  Caine  of  our  current  days  is  not  quite  the  one 
whom  I  knew  from  1880  to  1882.  There  has  never 
been  a  lack  of  grudge  among  men  of  the  writing  pro- 


504        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

fession :  if  one  of  them  turns  out  "  a  great  success," 
the  eye  of  jealousy  becomes  greener  than  of  yore.  To 
be  the  owner  or  leaseholder  of  a  castle  in  the  Isle  of 
Man  does  not  assuage  the  greenness.  As  to  Mr.  Caine's 
Recollections  of  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti,  I  may  take  this 
opportunity  of  saying  that  my  individual  liking  for 
that  book  was  not  unmingled :  but  I  decidedly  consider 
it  to  be  an  honest  narration,  and  in  its  broad  lines  a  fair 
one.  Mr.  Caine  was  so  good  as  to  cut  out  from  his 
manuscript,  at  my  instance,  two  or  three  passages  which, 
while  they  had  no  real  bearing  upon  Dante  Rossetti's 
character  or  performances  one  way  or  other,  would  have 
been  calculated  to  wound  some  susceptibilities. 

A  poet  occupying  a  peculiar  niche  of  his  own  was 
Mr.  Francis  Adams,  author  of  the  Songs  of  the  Army  of 
the  Night.  He  sent  me  from  Australia  in  1890  a  copy 
of  this  work  ;  which  I  found  to  be  full  of  superb  ttan 
and  vigorous  impulsive  poetic  feeling,  mingled  with 
unflinching  (and  sometimes  indeed  unmannerly)  de- 
nunciation of  "the  powers  that  be."  I  wrote  to  Mr. 
Adams  expressing  a  very  high  estimate  of  the  book. 
He  in  the  autumn  of  the  same  year  returned  to 
England  and  gave  us  a  call ;  it  was  when  our  house  in 
Endsleigh  Gardens  was  half  stripped  of  furniture,  pend- 
ing our  removal  to  St.  Edmund's  Terrace.  Mr. 
Adams — then  about  thirty  years  of  age — was  noticeably 
handsome,  with  correct  features  and  a  very  animated  air ; 
his  manner  was  that  of  a  man  of  thorough  cultivation, 
and  even  elegance.  He  conversed  agreeably — not  dic- 
tatorially,  but  as  if  conscious  of  being  in  the  right  on 
the  topics  he  dealt  with,  and  qualified  to  guide  others. 
He  was  a  consumptive  invalid,  and  then  in  an  advanced 
stage  of  the  malady,  although  I  should  not  have 


OTHER   ACQUAINTANCES  505 

thought  so  to  look  at  him.  This  was  our  only  inter- 
view, for  he  left  London  at  once  and  went  to  live 
elsewhere.  Towards  the  middle  of  1893  ^is  disease 
had  brought  him  near  to  the  last  gasp — indeed,  I 
understand  that  he  could  at  the  utmost  have  lived  only 
a  day  or  two.  His  sufferings  were  intense  :  he  called 
for  a  pistol,  and  shot  himself  dead.  After  his  death  I 
was  asked  to  see  to  the  bringing  out  of  a  new  edition 
of  the  Songs  of  the  Army  of  the  Night^  and  was  informed 
that  Adams  had  empowered  me  to  use  my  discretion  as 
to  minor  omissions  or  alterations.  At  first  I  assented  : 
but,  when  it  came  to  the  point,  I  considered  that  some 
things  in  the  volume  ought  not  to  pass  muster  through 
my  hands  (for  after  all  I  was  a  Government  official, 
whatever  else  I  might  be),  while  at  the  same  time  I  was 
highly  reluctant  to  interfere  with  the  full  and  free 
expression  of  the  deceased  author's  own  convictions.  I 
therefore  relinquished  this  task,  and  undertook  instead 
the  editing  of  Adams's  manuscript  drama  of  Tiberius. 
The  Tiberius  is  not  a  play  that  could  ever  be  acted:  it 
is  to  be  considered  as  a  dramatic  poem,  and  as  such  is 
fairly  imbued  with  the  dramatic  spirit,  and  contains 
many  fine  things.  So  far  as  I  saw,  it  made  very  little 
impression  on  the  British  public. 

Some  few  years  after  the  close  of  Adams's  life,  I 
suppose  in  1897,  we  received  a  visit  from  his  widow,  an 
Australian  lady  who  had  recently  had  some  insight  into 
the  domestic  life  of  an  Egyptian  Pasha  and  his  women. 
We  passed  a  very  agreeable  afternoon  with  this  striking- 
looking  and  clear-minded  lady  :  it  was  rapidly  followed 
by  a  rather  startling  request — that  I  would  "give  her 
away."  If  startling,  the  request  was  also  flattering  :  so, 
in  a  church  at  Hampstead,  I  gave  Mrs.  Adams  away, 
ii. — p 


506        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

and  she  became  Mrs.  Dean,  wife  of  a  well-skilled  land- 
scape-painter, not  previously  known  to  me.  Both  of 
them  continue  to  be  on  the  list  of  our  esteemed  friends. 

Mr.  William  Sharp,  a  gentleman  of  much  activity  in. 
various  lines  of  literature,  made  my  brother's  ac- 
quaintance (through  the  introduction  of  Sir  Noel  Paton) 
about  1879,  and  saw  not  a  little  of  him.  I  met  Mr. 
Sharp  from  time  to  time  in  the  Cheyne  Walk  house, 
and  did  not  lose  sight  of  him  later  on.  He  was  the 
author  of  a  rather  elaborately  planned  and  very  eulo- 
gistic book  on  Rossetti,  which  came  out  at  much  the 
same  time  as  Mr.  Caine's  Recollections.  Dr.  Todhunter 
(of  whom  I  have  spoken  in  connexion  with  Shelley)  and 
his  wife  were  also  welcome  visitors  in  our  house. 

Mr.  Keningale  Cook,  author  of  an  interesting  and 
thoughtful  book  named  The  Fathers  of  Jesus  (i.e.  propa- 
gators of  spiritual  and  moral  truths  which  reappeared 
in  the  Christian  teachings),  had  been  known  to  myself 
as  far  back  perhaps  as  1870,  when  he  consulted  me  as 
to  some  poems  ;  we  were  more  particularly  acquainted 
with  him  in  1886,  while  we  were  staying  at  Bourne- 
mouth, and  he  on  the  outskirts  of  the  New  Forest. 
This  was  an  acquaintance  which  bade  fair  to  develop 
into  intimacy,  but  was  suddenly  terminated  by  the 
premature  death  of  Mr.  Cook  about  a  year  afterwards. 
There  were  likewise  Mr.  Karl  Blind  and  his  wife,  their 
daughter  Mrs.  Charles  Hancock,  and  their  son  Mr. 
Rudolf  Blind  the  painter.  We  received  a  large  measure 
of  warm  hospitality  in  the  Hancock  house  —  which, 
after  an  interval  of  some  years,  I  had  the  satisfaction  of 
revisiting  in  the  autumn  of  1903.  Of  our  principal 
intimate  in  the  Blind  family,  Miss  Mathilde  Blind,  I 
have  spoken  before.  A  great  number  of  other  names 


OTHER  ACQUAINTANCES  507 

occur  to  me — names  of  persons  whom  I  have  known, 
more  or  less,  at  widely  separated  dates  in  my  life.  I 
must  limit  myself  to  simply  specifying  Mrs.  Lucy 
Clifford,  Miss  Amy  Levy,  Jules  Andrieu  (who  had  been 
a  member  of  the  Paris  Commune),  Edouard  Rod,  Cecil 
Lawson,  Mr.  Hipkins  the  pianoforte  specialist,  the 
ladies  of  the  Hepworth  Dixon  family,  Professor  C. 
Eliot  Norton,  George  Mason,  Katharine  Tynan  (Mrs. 
Hinkson),  Du  Maurier,  J.  Dykes  Campbell,  Samuel 
Butler  (author  of  Erewhon  etc.),  Mrs.  F.  G.  Stephens, 
and  H.  C.  Marillier. 

I  have  known  a  few  Japanese  from  time  to  time.  The 
first  was  an  acquaintance  of  George  P.  Boyce,  Nagai. 
I  forget  the  name  of  one  whom  I  saw  much  later  on  as 
student  in  the  Slade  School  of  Art  in  London.  Sanjo, 
son  of  a  Minister  of  the  Japanese  Empire,  and  Oshikoji 
Kasumaru  (a  funny  roly-poly  little  chap)  were  youths 
boarded  in  the  house  of  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Furnivall  for  in- 
struction and  training.  Oshikoji  wrote  me  a  letter  of 
exceeding  quaintness,  in  his  own  language,  and  Sanjo 
was  so  good  as  to  translate  it  for  me  into  English. 
Baron  Suyematzu,  whom  I  met  in  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Charles 
Hancock's  house,  had  written  in  English  a  curious 
booklet  maintaining  the  thesis  that  a  certain  Japanese 
hero  of  splendid  fame,  Yoshitsum£,  the  close  of  whose 
life  was  unknown,  was  the  same  person  who  re-emerged 
in  Tartary  as  Jenghis  Khan,  the  conqueror  of  half  the 
Eastern  Hemisphere.  1  transmitted  this  brochure  to  Sir 
Henry  Howorth,  the  historian  of  the  Mongols  :  who 
found  a  good  word  to  say  for  my  Japanese's  ingenuity, 
and  also  his  ingenuousness  in  supposing  that  Jenghis 
Khan,  whose  origin  and  early  career  are  perfectly  well 
known  (but  we  are  not  all  so  well  up  in  them  as  Sir 


508        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

Henry),  could  possibly  have  been  anybody  other  than 
himself.  In  1903  I  became  acquainted  (as  stated  in  my 
1 8th  section)  first  with  the  poems  of  Mr.  Yone  Noguchi, 
and  afterwards  with  himself,  a  young  man  aged  about 
twenty-five  ;  whom  I  salute  without  any  hesitation  as 
richly  endowed  with  poetical  faculty,  and  fully  capable 
of  writing,  as  he  progresses  in  the  manipulation  of  the 
English  language,  poems  admirable  and  impressive  in  a 
high  degree.  I  was  genuinely  astonished  to  find  in 
Japanese  effusions  so  much  of  what  Europeans  recog- 
nize as  the  ideal.  I  hope  to  cultivate  his  acquaintance 
further  whenever  he  may  return  to  London.  Lastly 
I  may  mention  Mr.  Shozo  Kato,  of  New  Oxford  Street, 
and  his  nephew,  who  continue  to  keep  up  a  rich 
feast  of  Japonnerie  in  my  bookshelves  and  portfolios — 
including  (but  this  is  naturally  an  exceptional  instance) 
a  book  of  Japanese  feats  of  arms  etc.,  in  ninety  volumes, 
illustrated  by  Hokusai — the  complete  work,  not  easily 
procurable.  I  transferred  it  to  my  daughter  Helen.  I 
likewise  met  a  few  times  Mr.  Sadakichi  Hartmann,  son 
of  an  American  father  and  a  Japanese  mother  :  he  is 
well  known  across  the  Atlantic  in  both  theatrical  and 
literary  circles,  and  has  published  a  History  of  Japanese  Art. 
In  1884  I  received  a  letter  from  an  American,  the 
Honourable  Charles  Aldrich,  living  in  the  State  of  Iowa, 
asking  me  for  some  autographs,  those  of  Dante  and 
Christina  Rossetti  being  principally  in  demand.  I  sent 
him  these,  and  at  various  subsequent  intervals  numerous 
other  autographs,  I  dare  say  more  than  a  couple  of 
hundred  ;  for  during  many  years  past  I  have  made  it  a 
practice  to  set  apart  letters  etc.  coming  into  my  hands 
from  interesting  persons,  and  to  give  them  away  as  auto- 
graphs to  applicants,  casual  though  these  may  be.  Of 


OTHER   ACQUAINTANCES  509 

course,  I  do  not  treat  thus  such  letters  as  are  valued  by 
myself,  nor  such  as  contain  confidential  matter.  I  don't 
know  how  many  such  papers  I  may  by  this  time  have 
presented  in  all — perhaps  at  least  fifteen  to  eighteen 
hundred,  besides  several  hundred  (not  all  of  them  un- 
important) made  over  to  my  daughter  Helen.  Mr. 
Aldrich,  as  I  learned,  had  collected,  and  still  went  on  col- 
lecting, autographs  at  a  great  rate,  including  many 
historical  and  other  documents  of  marked  importance. 
I  presume  this  was  at  first  a  private  hobby  of  his  own, 
but  it  had  developed  into  a  public-spirited  plan  for  the 
benefit  of  the  Iowa  State-library.  Here  are  lodged  all 
Mr.  Aldrich's  copious  gleanings,  including  a  "  Rossetti 
section  "  by  no  means  inconsiderable  :  and  I  have  seen 
divers  newspaper-paragraphs  and  articles  (besides  letters 
from  Aldrich  to  the  same  effect)  showing  that  this  sec- 
tion is — what  I  should  hardly  have  anticipated — an 
object  of  substantial  interest  to  the  visitors  from  various 
parts  of  Iowa  and  elsewhere.  Mr.  Aldrich,  who  was 
engaged  in  farming  when  first  I  knew  of  him,  is  now 
the  curator  of  the  "  Historical  Department  of  Iowa,"  in 
the  State-capital,  Des  Moines.  I  saw  him  in  two  in- 
stances when  he  visited  England,  and  I  keep  up  to  this 
day  a  correspondence  with  him  ;  and  it  is  no  more  than 
justice  to  say  that  I  never  met  a  man  to  whom  the  duties 
of  citizenship  seem  to  come  more  natural — he  appears 
constantly  to  merge  his  personal  interests  in  those  of  his 
Institution,  his  State,  and  ultimately  the  American 
Union.  At  an  advanced  age  he  continues  to  work  hard, 
and  always  with  a  public  end  in  view.  On  one  of  his 
visits  to  Europe  he  was  accompanied  by  Mrs.  Aldrich,  a 
well-informed  and  well-bred  but  perfectly  unpretentious 
specimen  of  the  American  housewife.  My  wife  con- 


5io        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

ceived  a  high  regard  for  her,  and  it  was  a  sorrow  to  both 
of  us  to  hear  of  her  decease  some  few  years  afterwards. 

Autograph-hunters  are  undoubtedly  capable  of  making 
themselves  a  nuisance  ;  but  I  cannot  say  that  I  ever  felt 
that  scornful  irritation  which  some  people  profess  at  the 
practice  of  autograph-collecting,  and  at  the  practitioners 
thereof.  The  practice  appears  to  me  an  extremely 
rational  one  ;  and  the  practitioners  the  like,  and  worthy 
of  some  indulgence  even  if  they  "  poke  about  "  here  and 
there  where  they  are  not  quite  wanted.  Autographs — if 
they  are  the  sign-manual  of  really  distinguished  memor- 
able persons,  and  not  of  mere  titled  or  advertized 
nobodies — are  interesting  things.  However  "  intellec- 
tual "  one  may  be,  to  look  through  a  well-selected 
assortment  of  them  is  a  pleasure,  and  far  from  a  stupid 
pleasure.  I  speak  disinterestedly,  for  I  have  never 
myself  formed,  nor  coveted  to  form,  a  collection. 

I  will  here  give  an  autograph-anecdote,  realizing  the 
sublime  of  impudence.  It  relates  to  a  person  who  had 
never,  I  suppose,  ranked  as  an  autograph-collector,  but 
rather  as  a  begging  -  letter  writer.  A  certain  Mr.  B. 
was  for  successive  years  in  the  habit  of  writing  to 
Christina  Rossetti  asking  for  money.  If  I  ever  knew, 
I  have  quite  forgotten,  who  or  what  Mr.  B.  is  :  he 
had  not,  I  think,  any  even  shadowy  connexion  with  any 
member  of  our  family,  but  had  some  sort  of  position  on 
the  merest  outskirts  of  authorship.  Christina,  who  was 
always  more  than  willing  to  be  charitable  to  the  extent 
of  her  modest  means,  and  who  lived  in  permanent  dread 
of  failing  in  one  or  other  item  of  Christian  duty,  used  in 
reply  to  send  some  small  sums  enclosed  in  letters  equally 
redolent  of  sympathy  and  of  politeness.  Either  after 
her  death  in  1894  or  some  little  while  before  it,  I 


OTHER  ACQUAINTANCES  511 

noticed,  in  the  catalogues  of  a  well-known  London 
bookseller  and  autograph-dealer,  entries  of  letters  by 
Christina  Rossetti  to  this  Mr.  B.  He  pocketed  her 
well-meant  alms,  and  then  trudged  off  to  this  auto- 
graph-dealer and  sold  her  letters  as  autographs  ;  and,  if 
the  prices  paid  to  him  for  them  bore  any  tolerable  pro- 
portion to  those  set  forth  by  the  dealer,  Mr.  B.  made  a 
comparatively  good  thing  of  the  transaction.  Years 
elapsed,  and  one  evening  in  1899  Mr.  B.  called  at  my 
house  presenting  a  begging-letter.  To  say  whether  I 
complied  or  not  at  the  moment  would  not  be  to  the  pur- 
pose. Next  day  I  wrote  to  Mr.  B.,  saying  that  I  had 
become  aware  of  his  habit  of  selling  as  autographs 
letters  addressed  to  him  by  my  sister,  and  that  this  was 
a  shabby  act  highly  distasteful  to  me.  Now  "  would  it 
surprise  you  to  learn  "  (as  the  Counsel  used  to  say  to  the 
Tichborne  Claimant)  that  Mr.  B.  once  more  trudged  off 
to  that  autograph-dealer,  and  sold  him  as  an  autograph 
that  very  letter  in  which  I  had  reprobated  his  auto- 
graphic proceedings  ?  Such  is  the  fact.  I  saw  in  due 
•course  my  "  autograph  "  letter  "  A.  L.  S."  in  the  dealer's 
catalogue,  with  an  extract  printed  from  it  to  the  above 
effect.  My  vanity  was  perhaps  flattered  at  finding  that 
it  was  offered  for  sale  by  the  dealer  at  a  price  higher 
than  I  should  have  supposed  to  be  its  market  value. 

Mr.  Edward  A.  Silsbee,  an  American,  has  been 
casually  mentioned  in  my  22nd  section.  He  called  on 
me  towards  the  beginning  of  1878,  when  I  was  pre- 
paring my  revised  reissue  of  Shelley's  poems.  He 
came  from  Florence,  where  he  had  been  living  for  some 
years,  housed  in  the  same  dwelling  with  Miss  Clare 
Clairmont.  He  was  an  ardent  Shelleyite,  and  said  from 
time  to  time  some  of  the  most  penetrative  and  impres- 


5i2        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETO 

sive  things  about  Shelley  that  I  have  heard  from  the  lips 
of  any  one.  On  this  footing  he  and  I  of  course  soon 
fraternized.  I  had  had  two  interviews  or  so  with  him 
when  I  received  from  Miss  Clairmont  that  letter  of 
which  I  have  already  spoken  reflecting  upon  my  conduct 
in  having  (in  the  previous  edition  of  Shelley)  referred 
to  her  relations  of  old  with  Lord  Byron,  and  insisting 
that  all  such  matter  should  be  henceforth  omitted.  Mr. 
Silsbee  had  not  as  yet  said  to  me  anything  foreshadowing 
tjiis  move  on  Miss  Clairmont's  part,  but  now  I  could 
but  think  that  he  must  have  been  privy  to  her  intention, 
if  not  to  the  actual  dispatching  of  her  letter.  My  wife 
felt  rather  strongly  on  the  subject,  and  for  a  while  viewed 
Silsbee  with  anything  but  a  favouring  eye.  However,  I 
admitted  to  myself  that,  although  he  might  have  pursued 
a  covert  course  causing  me  some  embarrassment,  he 
had  not  done  anything  distinctly  sinister  or  condem- 
nable  ;  so  I  continued  to  receive  him  as  before  while  he 
remained  in  London  on  the  present  occasion,  and  also 
when  from  time  to  time  he  returned.  He  was  besides 
a  strong  Japoniseur,  and  this  formed  another  bond  of 
union  between  us.  At  a  much  later  date  he  went  to 
Japan,  and  travelled  back  (to  my  regret)  with  no  sort  of 
liking  for  Japanese  people  in  the  flesh.  When  my  wife 
was  collecting  materials  for  her  book  on  Mary  Shelley, 
Mr.  Silsbee  came  forward  to  supply  her  with  details,  of 
which  he  had  a  plentiful  stock  ;  and  she  not  only  re- 
laxed her  preceding  rigour,  but  viewed  him  with  very 
marked  predilection — a  feeling  in  which  my  daughters 
in  after  years  heartily  concurred.  Silsbee  had  been  a  sea- 
faring man  up  to  middle  age  ;  and,  when  I  was  preparing 
to  start  for  Australia  with  Helen  in  1896,  he  spoke  with 
so  much  elation  of  spirit  about  trade-winds  and  other 


OTHER   ACQUAINTANCES  513 

maritime  delights  that  I  urged  him  to  join  in  our  expe- 
dition if  possible :  but  he  was  bound  to  return  to  America, 
and  had  to  decline.  He  had  once,  he  told  me,  dis- 
covered in  the  Pacific  some  islet,  not  much  more  exten- 
sive than  a  big  rock,  on  which  geographers  had  bestowed 
the  name  of  Silsbee.  I  never  saw  this  attractive  and 
noticeable  man  after  my  return  from  Australia — a  date 
which  he  did  not  long  survive.  A  handsome  and 
merited  tribute  has  been  paid  to  him  by  Dr.  Garnett,  in 
his  preface  to  the  recently-published  Diary  of  Lieutenant 
Edward  Ellerker  Williams,  the  friend  of  Shelley. 

Another  person  with  whom  my  wife  had  the  advan- 
tage of  conferring  in  connexion  with  her  Mary  Shelley 
was  Mrs.  Lonsdale,  the  daughter  of  Williams's  widow 
and  of  Thomas  Jefferson  Hogg  :  she  came  through  the 
introduction  of  Mrs.  Call.  To  see  the  daughter  of  two 
persons  so  closely  associated  with  Shelley  would  have 
been  of  interest  to  me  :  but  I  had  not  this  good  hap,  as 
there  was  only  one  visit  from  Mrs.  Lonsdale.  She  was 
a  lady  of  exceptional  embonpoint.  After  her  death,  to- 
wards 1898,  the  nation  came  into  possession  of  a  portrait 
of  Shelley,  and  of  the  guitar  which  Mr.  William  Graham 
(see  p.  355)  beheld  in  the  hands  of  Miss  Clairmont 
when  she  did  not  own  it  and  never  had  had  to  do  with 
it.  A  good  deal  of  uncertainty  seems  to  prevail  as  to 
that  portrait  of  Shelley  :  some  persons  affirming  explicitly 
that  it  is  the  original  painted  by  Miss  Curran,  and  others 
that  it  is  a  copy  made,  with  slight  modifications,  by 
George  Clint  from  Miss  Curran's  original.  I  feel  some 
confidence  in  saying  that  it  is  the  copy  by  Clint.  The 
Curran  portrait,  which  is  now  likewise  in  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery,  always  belonged  to  Sir  Percy  and  Lady 
Shelley. 


Oil* 


5i4        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

In  Manchester  Madox  Brown  naturally  made  ac- 
quaintance with  several  leading  persons  :  one  of  them 
was  Sir  Henry  Howorth,  then  M.P.,  author  of  The 
History  of  the  Mongols,  and  of  other  works  showing  a 
remarkably  wide  range  of  thought  and  learning.  In 
one  of  my  visits  to  Manchester,  perhaps  in  1882,  I  was 
introduced  to  Sir  Henry,  and  saw  him  various  times. 
He  was  markedly  courteous  to  me,  and  I  retain  a  very 
pleasurable  impression  of  our  brief  intercourse.  There 
were  also  Mr.  C.  P.  Scott,  editor  of  The  Man- 
chester Guardian ;  Mr.  Alexander  Ireland,  editor  of  The 
Manchester  Examiner  and  Times;  and  Mr.  Kendrick 
Pyne  the  organist,  whose  organ-recitals  in  the  Town 
Hall  formed  one  of  the  most  genuine  enjoyments  of 
Brown  while  domiciled  in  Manchester,  and  cheered 
many  of  his  working-hours  in  the  same  building.  Mr. 
Ireland  was  a  most  vigorous  expansive  old  gentleman, 
full  of  interesting  and  racy  reminiscences  of  Leigh  Hunt, 
Carlyle,  and  other  literary  magnates  of  that  period  :  his 
wife  in  her  closing  years  wrote  about  Carlyle,  and  be- 
came a  lecturer  of  much  acceptance.  Mr.  Pyne  is  now 
a  connexion  of  mine  by  marriage — a  somewhat  remote 
connexion,  for  which  perhaps  the  "  table  of  affinities " 
does  not  supply  any  designation  :  he  is  brother  to  the 
lady  (Zoe  Pyne)  who  married  towards  1898  Oliver 
HuefFer,  son  of  my  wife's  half-sister. 


XXXI 

DEATHS  IN  THE  FAMILY 

DANTE,    FRANCES,    LUCY,    AND 

CHRISTINA   ROSSETTI,   AND    OTHERS 

TT  is  impossible  to  write  reminiscences  without  ming- 
ling  amid  some  sweet  a  large  infusion  of  bitter. 
Here  comes  my  bitterest. 

From  my  birth-year  1829  up  to  1881  the  deaths  in 
the  Rossetti  family  and  connexion  had  not  been 
numerous.  There  were  my  maternal  grandparents  in 
1853,  my  father  in  1854,  and  my  sister  Maria  in  1876  ; 
also  some  other  deaths  less  impressive  to  my  feelings. 
But  in  the  thirteen  years  beginning  with  1882  all  the 
persons  dearest  to  me,  except  my  four  surviving  children, 
were  swept  away. 

The  first  to  perish,  in  April  1882,  was  Dante  Gabriel, 
my  deeply-loved  brother,  the  pharos  of  our  house.  His 
splendid  genius  was  not  grudgingly  recognized  during 
his  lifetime,  and  it  stands  now  well  established  over  the 
British  Empire,  the  Continent  of  Europe,  and  the 
English-speaking  races  of  America.  Reckoning  to- 
gether his  attainments  in  painting  and  in  poetry  (what- 
ever may  be  the  fair  deductions  to  be  made  in  each  case) 
and  the  influence  which  he  exercised  in  both  arts,  partly 
by  the  performances  themselves  and  partly  by  personal 
ascendant,  I  need  not  scruple  to  say  that  he  was  one  of 


516        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

the  most  memorable  men  of  his  epoch  ;  and  I  am  far 
from  being  the  first  to  aver  as  much. 

In  my  Memoir  of  Dante  Rossetti  I  have  set  forth  so 
many  particulars  regarding  the  sequence  of  his  illnesses, 
culminating  in  death,  that  I  may  spare  myself  any  long 
recital  of  them  here.  I  will  only  very  briefly  sum- 
marize as  follows.  Insomnia  began  in  1 867.  In  the  same 
year  his  sight  became  badly  affected,  compelling  him 
at  times  to  intermit  painting.  From  this  date  onwards 
his  eyes  were  permanently  somewhat  infirm,  but  the  evil 
did  not  proceed  to  a  great  extreme.  As  a  palliative 
against  insomnia  he  took  doses  of  chloral.  This  com- 
menced in  1870,  and  after  an  interval  was  renewed — the 
doses,  to  which  a  glass  of  whisky  was  made  an  adjunct, 
becoming  abnormally  and  noxiously  heavy.  This  chloral 
mitigated  his  troubles  from  want  of  sleep,  and  for  a 
while  it  did  not  seem  to  do  any  particular  harm  ;  but  it 
acted  injuriously  upon  his  nervous  system  and  his 
spirits  and  power  of  self-control.  The  fact  became 
only  too  apparent  in  June  1872,  when  he  entirely 
broke  down  under  the  irritation  and  strain  caused  by 
Mr.  Buchanan's  abusive  pamphlet,  The  Fleshly  School  of 
Poetry.  He  then  became  the  victim  of  exaggerated,  and 
sometimes  of  absolutely  delusive,  fancies.  The  ques- 
tion arises  whether  the  chloral  or  the  pamphlet  had 
most  to  do  with  his  then  shattered  condition.  For 
many  years  past  my  conviction  has  been  that  both  were 
concerned  in  the  crisis,  but  that  the  pamphlet  would 
have  produced  only  a  comparatively  faint  impression, 
had  it  not  been  for  the  chloral.  My  brother  in  the 
course  of  three  months  threw  oft  the  acuter  forms  of 
the  attack,  but  he  was  never  quite  the  same  man  that  he 
had  been  before  it.  His  health  was  often  broken,  his 


DEATHS   IN   THE   FAMILY  517 

spirits  often  gloomy  ;  not  so  constantly,  however,  as 
some  persons  seem  to  suppose.  He  went  on  painting 
with  energy  and  success,  and  produced  some  of  his  best 
poems.  A  severe  illness  which  prostrated  him  in  1877 
had  a  cause  quite  other  than  insomnia,  chloral,  or  hypo- 
chondria ;  though  it  may  be  that  his  persisting  with 
the  drug  rendered  him  less  capable  of  rallying.  He 
did  however  rally,  and  up  to  the  autumn  of  1881  was 
in  much  the  same  general  condition  as  before  this 
illness.  On  1 1  December  he  had  a  sudden  attack 
of  a  paralytic  character.  This  again  was  subdued  to 
some  fair  extent ;  he  discontinued  chloral,  and  he  went 
to  Birchington-on-Sea  (near  Margate)  to  recruit.  But 
the  grasp  of  Death  was  to  be  relaxed  no  more.  He 
died  of  uraemia  at  Birchington  on  Easter  Sunday, 
9  April  1882.  I  was  present,  with  others,  at  the 
moment  when  his  breathing  ceased.  Uraemia  was  indeed 
the  medically  certified  cause  of  death  ;  but,  taking  a 
wider  view  of  the  matter,  I  do  not  believe  that  I 
exaggerate  in  saying  that  chloral  brought  him  to  his 
grave. 

The  above  meagre  outline  must  suffice  for  those 
phases  of  my  brother's  concluding  years  in  which  my 
feelings  are  most  deeply  involved,  and  I  proceed  to 
details  of  a  different  order.  From  me  he  needs  no 
epitaph,  pompous  or  fraternal.  His  works  are  his 
epitaph,  which  has  by  this  time  been  conned  by  many, 
with  increasing  earnestness. 

Since  he  had 

The  genius  to  be  loved,  why  let  him  have 
The  justice  to  be  honoured  in  his  grave. 

Dante  Rossetti,  by  a  will  made  immediately  before 
his  death,  left  me  as  his  executor,  and  our  mother  and 


5i 8        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

myself  as  his  joint  legatees.  Though  he  had  always 
had  something  of  the  spendthrift  in  his  composition, 
the  debts  which  had  to  be  met  were  not  anything  out  of 
the  common,  apart  from  those  which  applied  to  pictorial 
work  undertaken  and  unavoidably  uncompleted,  and 
the  sums  received  for  it  by  him  in  advance.  There 
were  some  of  the  ordinary  tradesmen's  bills,  including 
(if  I  remember  right)  upwards  of  £100  for  chloral,, 
due  to  two  firms,  and  a  somewhat  considerable  amount 
to  his  art-assistant,  Mr.  Dunn.  A  substantial  sum,, 
likewise,  had  to  be  paid  to  the  landlord  of  the  house  as 
a  substitute  for  my  undertaking  extensive  repairs.  The 
two  claimants  for  money  advanced  in  respect  of  work 
uncompleted  were  Mr.  William  Graham  and  Mr- 
Leonard  R.  Valpy  :  their  claims  were  of  course  paid, 
and  "made  a  hole"  in  the  assets.  I  forget  what  was 
the  net  sum  realized — probably  not  far  short  of  ^5,000 1 
there  were  about  ^2,000  from  the  artistic  and  other 
contents  of  the  house  in  Cheyne  Walk,  and  a  nearly 
similar  sum  from  his  own  remaining  works  of  art. 
Those  two  sales,  more  especially  the  former  one,  were 
accounted  a  marked  success.  As  I  have  before  said,  it 
was  Mr.  Watts-Dunton  who  gave  me  the  benefit  of  his 
legal  advice  throughout  the  questions,  sometimes  suffi- 
ciently thorny,  arising  during  the  executorship  :  he 
managed  them  with  as  much  acuteness  as  friendliness,, 
and  earned  my  sincerest  thanks.  Madox  Brown  con- 
sented to  overhaul  the  unfinished  paintings  and  designs, 
and  to  do  his  best  to  put  them  into  saleable  condition. 
He  broke  off  his  own  work  in  Manchester,  and  came  to- 
London.  His  intentions  indeed  were  of  the  kind- 
est ;  but  in  effect  he  did  at  this  time  next  to  nothing,, 
being  not  very  willing  to  fall  in  with  the  views  of  the 


DEATHS   IN   THE   FAMILY  519 

person  most  responsible  (myself)  as  to  how  the  works 
would  have  to  be  disposed  of  by  sale.  At  a  later  date, 
when  leisure  and  deliberation  served  better,  he  obliged 
my  wife  (to  whom  I  had  presented  the  uncompleted 
works  not  put  into  the  auction-sale  of  1883)  by  painting 
upon  them  :  the  replica  of  the  Beata  Beatrix,  now  in 
the  Public  Gallery  of  Birmingham,  was  thus  turned 
into  a  very  saleable  picture,  and  was  sold  as  being  a 
work  by  Rossetti,  finished  by  Brown.  It  is  in  some 
respects,  naturally  not  in  all,  the  better  version  of  the 
two.  Five  others  were  disposed  of  by  auction  in  1894. 

A  deal  of  work  devolved  upon  me  in  relation  to  my 
brother's  copyrights  ;  chiefly  those  of  his  writings,  and, 
in  a  subordinate  degree,  of  the  photographic  negatives 
from  a  good  number  of  his  paintings  and  designs.  I 
brought  out  at  the  close  of  1886  his  Collected  Worksy 
through  the  firm  of  Ellis  and  Scrutton  (now  named 
Ellis)  which  had  succeeded  Ellis'  and  White,  Dante 
Rossetti's  own  publishers  ;  and  there  have  been  various 
other  forms,  subsequent  to  this,  in  which  his  writings 
have  come  before  the  public.  Matters  of  this  sort  con- 
tinue to  occupy  my  attention  up  to  the  present  date, 
as  opportunities  arise.  In  France,  Italy,  and  Germany, 
translations  from  some  of  his  poems  have  been  pub- 
lished (one  volume  is  by  my  son-in-law  Agresti),  and  I 
have  had  to  be  consulted  in  one  or  other  instance. 
Some  elegant  translations  from  The  House  of  Life,  made 
by  a  Viennese,  Herr  Alfred  von  Ehrmann  (with  whom 
I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  some  personal  conference) 
are  in  print. 

At  the  date  of  my  brother's  death  the  chief  collec- 
tions of  his  paintings  were  those  formed  by  Rae, 
Leathart,  Leyland,  and  Graham.  These  latter  three 


520        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

have  now  been  dispersed ;  and,  apart  from  the  Rae 
collection,  the  most  noticeable  extant  gathering  is  that 
in  the  hands  of  Mr.  Fairfax  Murray.  Some  of  the 
Murray  works  have  gone  to  the  Art  Gallery  of  Bir- 
mingham. Some  other  leading  works  are  now  in  the 
possession  of  Mr.  Charles  Butler,  others  in  America. 
The  best  book  to  be  consulted  on  this  branch  of  the 
subject  is  that  of  H.  C.  Marillier,  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti, 
1899. 

In  the  early  summer  of  1882  I  contemplated  getting 
together  an  exhibition  of  my  brother's  works,  although 
credibly  advised  that  it  was  not  likely  to  add  to  the 
assets  of  his  estate.  Before  I  had  taken  any  definite 
steps,  I  learned  that  Mr.  Leyland  had  offered  to  the 
Royal  Academy  that,  if  they  would  organize  an  exhibi- 
tion, he  would  contribute  for  the  purpose  the  works  in 
his  possession,  and  the  Academy  undertook  to  act.  I 
therefore  gave  up  my  project,  of  which  little  could  have 
been  made  under  such  conditions.  Lord  Leighton  con- 
sulted me  to  some  extent  as  to  the  works  to  be  secured ; 
but  in  the  main  that  exhibition  was  got  up  without  my 
being  actively  concerned  in  it.  There  was  a  certain 
sense  of  incongruity  in  the  fact  that  an  artist  who  had 
been  ignored  by  the  Academy  throughout  his  lifetime — 
and  who  indeed  had  ignored  the  Academy  not  less 
decisively — should  after  his  decease  be  represented  on 
the  Academy-walls  in  an  exhibition  which  the  members 
put  together  and  controlled,  and  of  which  they  reaped 
the  profit,  if  any  :  to  this  point  however  I  was  sufficiently 
indifferent.  In  some  quarters  it  was  even  alleged  that 
the  Academicians,  with  Leighton  as  their  president,  were 
endeavouring  rather  to  burke  than  to  promote  the  repu- 
tation of  Rossetti,  and  some  colour  was  lent  to  the  im- 


DEATHS   IN   THE   FAMILY  521 

putation  by  the  cramped  way  in  which  the  pictures  were 
at  first  hung,  until  a  remonstrance  (written  by  Francis 
Hueffer)  appeared  in  The  Times.  I  acquit  Leighton  of 
any  such  oblique  intention,  and  know  nothing  of  it  as 
assignable  to  any  one  else.  Two  other  Rossetti  exhibi- 
tions were  got  up  in  1883 — one  a*  the  Burlington  Fine- 
Arts  Club,  and  the  other  in  Bond  Street ;  my  connexion 
with  the  former  (a  very  interesting  display,  actively 
promoted  by  Mr.  Tebbs)  was  only  subordinate,  and 
with  the  latter  nil.  Since  then  there  have  been  at  least 
two  other  such  gatherings,  the  last  (1902)  at  Leighton 
House,  supervised  by  Mrs.  Russell  Barrington  (who 
had  known  the  Brown  family  well)  and  Mr.  W.  M. 
Hardinge.  The  other  and  much  more  extensive  exhibi- 
tion, the  project  of  which  was  due  to  Burne-Jones,  was 
at  the  New  Gallery  in  Regent  Street. 

I  have  referred  briefly  (p.  516)  to  Mr.  Robert 
Buchanan  and  his  Fleshly  School  of  Poetry :  in  other 
writings  of  mine  I  have  spoken  of  them — not,  I  think, 
with  any  inordinate  amount  of  acerbity.  Mr.  Buchanan 
is  now  dead,  and  I  should  not  here  have  said  anything 
further  on  the  subject  if  only  people  would  leave  it 
where  he  himself  left  it  in  1881.  But  that  has  not  been 
done  :  his  biographer,  Miss  Harriet  Jay,  has  had  her 
say,  and  I  will  have  mine.  The  obvious  and  indis- 
putable stages  in  the  case  were  as  follows,  (i)  Dante 
Rossetti,  in  the  spring  of  1870,  published  his  volume 
Poems ;  it  was  received  with  general  and  warm  yet  not 
unmingled  applause.  (2)  In  1871,  Mr.  Buchanan  wrote 
an  article,  The  Fleshly  School  of  Poetry,  Mr.  Dante 
Rossetti:  it  was  published  in  October  of  that  year  in 
The  Contemporary  Review,  under  the  pseudonym  of 
Thomas  Maitland.  It  was  a  fierce  attack,  and  was 
n.— Q 


522        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

replied  to  by  Rossetti,  in  a  temperate  spirit,  in  an 
article  in  The  Athenaeum  named  The  Stealthy  School  of 
Criticism.  (3)  In  the  spring  of  1872  Mr.  Buchanan  re- 
issued in  pamphlet  form  his  article,  not  a  little  amplified 
and  further  envenomed.  (4)  Late  in  1881  Mr.  Buchanan 
dedicated  one  of  his  novels,  God  and  the  Man,  to 
Rossetti,  in  some  prefixed  verses,  wherein  he  totally 
withdrew  his  charges  against  both  his  poetry  and 
himself:  he  did  so  in  other  forms  as  well.  This — 
though  it  furnished  no  sort  of  explanation  as  to  why 
Buchanan  had  at  first  denounced  as  highly  impure 
poems  which  he  afterwards  declared  to  be  pure — was  a 
handsome,  and  in  some  degree  a  touching,  apology. 
He  termed  Rossetti  "an  Old  Enemy";  but  in  fact 
there  had  been  no  enmity  on  the  part  of  Rossetti,  but 
only  of  Buchanan.  Rossetti  died  very  soon  afterwards, 
and  there  the  matter  remained — wound  up,  and  the  evil 
of  it,  so  far  as  was  possible,  atoned  for. 

Not  long  before  his  final  illness  Mr.  Buchanan  re- 
curred in  print  to  the  subject — as  I  deem,  both  needlessly 
and  indiscreetly.  But,  as  he  is  not  here  to  prolong  the 
controversy,  I  will  not  dwell  on  that.  Now  comes  Miss 
Jay,  and  professes  to  vindicate  him,  and  to  re-besmirch 
that  same  Rossetti  whom  he  in  1881  greeted  as  "pure 
in  purpose,  blameless  in  song,  and  sweet  in  spirit." 

What  is  the  gist  of  Miss  Jay's  vindication  ?  It  makes 
matters  much  worse  than  before  for  "Thomas  Mait- 
land."  The  only  plausible — I  could  not  in  conscience 
say  tenable — excuse  for  that  pseudonymist  would  be  that 
he  genuinely  believed  Rossetti's  poems  to  be  vile  and 
deleterious,  and  that,  fired  by  zeal  for  moral  right,  he 
said  so  in  severely  aggressive  terms.  But  Miss  Jay  will 
not  have  it  thus  :  she  avers  that  the  whole  affair  was  one 


DEATHS   IN   THE   FAMILY  525 

of  rancour,  and  of  rancour  vicariously  applied.  Here  in 
brief  is  her  account  of  the  sequence  of  events,  neces- 
sarily supplemented  by  me  now  and  again,  (i)  Mr. 
Swinburne  expressed  in  print  a  slighting  opinion  of  the 
poetry  of  David  Gray,  then  deceased,  with  whom 
Buchanan  had  been  intimate.  Buchanan  resented  this, 
and  we  can  sympathize  with  his  feelings  as  a  friend, 
though  surely  Swinburne  must  have  had  a  right  to  his 
own  critical  views  about  David  Gray.  (2)  (But  this  Miss 
Jay  abstains  from  mentioning)  Buchanan,  after  the 
publication  of  Swinburne's  Poems  and  Ballads  in  1866, 
printed  in  The  Spectator  some  verses,  not  free  from 
ribaldry,  abusing  the  author  ;  and  I  thereafter  (which 
Miss  Jay  does  mention)  in  my  Criticism  of  the  Swin- 
burne volume,  termed  Buchanan  "  a  poor  and  pretentious 
poetaster."  My  reference  to  him  was  limited  to  those 
words.  They  expressed  the  opinion  which  I  then  truly 
entertained,  founded  upon  extracts  from  Buchanan's 
poems  cited  in  laudatory  reviews  ;  but  I  believe  that  at  a 
later  date  he  produced  work  (I  have  read  it  little  or 
hardly  at  all)  deserving  to  be  spoken  of  in  a  different 
tone.  (3)  (But  this  again  Miss  Jay  leaves  unstated)  Mr. 
Buchanan  wrote  in  The  Athenaeum  in  1870  a  very  damna- 
tory critique  of  my  edition  of  Shelley.  Here  one 
might  have  supposed  that  these  "  alarums  and  excur- 
sions "  would  come  to  an  end.  Mr.  Buchanan  had  had 
it  out  with  Mr.  Swinburne  for  not  admiring  David 
Gray's  poems,  and  with  me  for  not  admiring  his  own. 
I  had  not  in  any  way  replied.  But,  according  to  Miss 
Jay,  he  continued  to  nurse  a  grudge,  not  only  against 
Swinburne  and  me,  but  against  any  one  in  the  same 
"  set,"  and  consequently  (4)  he  attacked  my  brother  in 
The  Contemporary  Review  about  a  year  and  two-thirds 


WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

later.  How  far  this  explanation  goes  towards  "  white- 
washing" Mr.  Buchanan  I  will  not  discuss  :  the  facts,  as 
affirmed  by  his  own  advocate,  are  sufficient. 

There  is  one  curious  detail  involved  in  the  pleading. 
Miss  Jay,  quoting  from  Buchanan  himself,  says  that  a 
certain  sonnet  published  by  Dante  Rossetti  was  repro- 
bated by  Tennyson  in  energetic  language.  This  is  the 
sonnet  entitled  Nuptial  Sleep,  which  in  1870  was  included 
in  the  provisional  form  of  The  House  of  Life  series,  but 
was  omitted  by  my  brother  from  the  series  when  com- 
pleted in  the  volume  of  1881.  But  we  have  another 
and  a  very  diverse  account  of  the  opinion  which  Tenny- 
son entertained  and  expressed  as  to  that  sonnet.  In  the 
Life  of  Tennyson  by  his  son,  Vol.  II,  p.  505,  we  find  the 
following  for  all  men  to  read  :  it  is  among  the  Personal 
Recollections  by  F.  T.  Pa/grave,  who  was  an  intimate,  of 
old  standing,  of  the  Laureate.  "  In  Rossetti's  [volume] 
the  passion  and  imaginative  power  of  the  sonnet  Nuptial 
Sleep  impressed  him  (Tennyson)  deeply."  Which  state- 
ment are  we  to  believe  ?  Or  both  ?  If  it  is  true  that 
Tennyson  denounced  the  sonnet  as  averred,  I  can  only 
surmise  that  some  one  misrepresented  the  composition  to 
him,  and  that  he,  reading  it  hurriedly  if  at  all,  took  the 
misrepresentation  on  trust.  Besides,  I  have  in  my  hands 
an  authentic  copy  of  a  letter  written  on  22nd  Novem- 
ber 1871  by  another  friend  of  Tennyson.  I  have  no 
authority  for  mentioning  his  name  :  were  I  to  do  so,  it 
would  be  seen  that  on  this  particular  subject  no  one  has 
a  better  right  to  be  heard.  He  wrote  as  follows  :  "  Mr. 
Tennyson  was  among  the  first  to  object  to  Buchanan's 
article  that  it  was  by  no  means  a  fair  appraisement  of 
Rossetti  ;  much  of  whose  work  he  rates  extremely  high, 
the  sonnets  especially." 


DEATHS   IN   THE   FAMILY  525- 

Thus  much  for  Miss  Harriet  Jay's  "  rehabilitation  " 
of  Mr.  Robert  Buchanan.  Of  Mr.  Buchanan  himself 
I  had  no  knowledge,  and  am  not  conscious  of  having 
ever  seen  him — and  my  acquaintance  with  the  general 
body  of  his  writings  is,  as  aforesaid,  scanty  in  the  ex- 
treme. That  he  had  some  personal  as  well  as  some 
literary  merits  I  do  not  doubt.  I  presume  that  on  the 
other  hand  he  was  open  to  the  imputation  of  being 
"  ill-conditioned  " — irritable,  litigious,  self-assertive,  and, 
when  roused  into  ire,  not  duly  scrupulous.  In  relation 
to  Dante  Rossetti  he  committed  an  offence,  and  at  the 
end  of  several  years  he  did  his  best  to  wipe  it  out  :  that 
last  is  what  I  prefer  to  remember  of  him.  "  After  life's 
fitful  fever  he  sleeps  well."  To  him  it  appears  to  have 
been  highly  feverous. 

Our  mother  and  Christina  had  tenderly  solaced  the 
closing  months  of  Dante  Gabriel's  life  at  Birchington- 
on-Sea,  and  they  witnessed  the  drawing  of  his  latest 
breath  :  they  attended  his  funeral.  Our  mother  was 
then  close  upon  eighty-two  years  of  age.  She  survived 
him  exactly  four  years,  dying  on  8th  April  1886.  Save 
for  partial  deafness  (which  may  have  begun  as  early  as 
1868  or  so),  she  retained  all  her  faculties  to  the  end  : 
enfeebled  certainly,  yet  not  grievously  decayed.  Her 
decease  was  preceded,  but  not  caused,  by  a  fall  in  her 
room,  the  result  of  bodily  weakness  :  she  lingered  a 
month  or  more,  and  then  died  through  general  exhaus- 
tion of  the  vital  powers.  Christina  and  I  were  present 
at  the  close  :  it  occurred  during  the  prolonged  and 
harassed  stay  of  my  wife  and  children  at  Ventnor.  In 
the  death  of  a  mother  there  is  something  which,  more 
than  aught  else,  severs  one  from  one's  past :  it  is  the 
breaking  of  a  tie  that  subsisted  in  fullest  force  at  the 


526        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

first  moment  of  one's  existence,  and  which  has  con- 
tinued in  almost  or  quite  the  like  force  ever  since.  I 
felt  this  ;  and  Christina,  the  most  unceasingly  devoted  of 
daughters,  saw  in  the  loss  of  her  mother  the  practical 
close  of  her  own  life.  All  that  remained  for  her  was 
religious  resignation  for  a  sorrowful  interval,  and  a 
looking  forward  to  the  end.  The  nursing  of  two  in- 
valided aunts  (eventually  one)  occupied  her  hours,  and 
sapped  her  remaining  forces.  In  these  painful  years  one 
of  the  friends  whom  Christina  saw  with  most  satisfaction 
was  Miss  Lisa  Wilson  ;  a  lady  accomplished  in  verse  and 
sketching,  who  had  been  drawn  to  my  sister  by  her 
poetry,  and  viewed  her  with  deep  affection  and  reveren- 
tial regard.  My  daughters  and  I  continue  from  time  to 
time  to  see  this  lady,  whom  we  hold  in  the  highest 
esteem. 

My  wife,  in  a  dreadfully  shattered  condition  of  health 
which  left  neither  to  herself  nor  to  others  any  real  ex- 
pectation of  her  ever  recovering,  quitted  London,  as 
previously  stated,  on  3rd  October  1893,  bound  for 
Pallanza  on  the  Lago  Maggiore,  which  had  been  re- 
commended to  us  as  about  the  least  unpromising  place 
that  could  be  selected.  Our  three  daughters  accom- 
panied her  :  not  our  son,  who,  having  serious  studies  to 
pursue,  remained  at  home  with  me.  Her  father,  at  the 
moment  of  her  departure,  seemed  to  be  in  much  the 
same  state  of  health  as  was  then  his  wont  :  in  other 
words,  his  constantly  recurring  attacks  of  gout,  cramp- 
ing his  bodily  and  to  some  extent  his  mental  energies, 
were  not  then  at  any  critical  stage.  He  was  advanced  in 
his  seventy-third  year.  Scarcely  had  my  wife  gone 
when  he  was  assailed  by  apoplexy.  He  remained  un- 
conscious until  6th  October,  and  then  he  expired.  I 


DEATHS   IN   THE   FAMILY  527 

have  hardly  passed  any  period  of  more  trying  agitation 
than  that  which  ensued  between  the  date  when  Madox 
Brown  was  given  over,  and  the  date,  sorrowfully  de- 
ferred, when  I  learned  from  my  wife  that  she  had 
received  my  intimation  of  his  death.  There  were  painful 
details  to  be  attended  to  in  London,  and  the  still  more 
painful  obligation  of  explaining  to  my  wife,  in  successive 
letters  to  uncertain  addresses,  that  her  beloved  father  was 
dying,  and  then  dead,  with  the  dread  that,  in  her  most 
precarious  state,  such  calamitous  and  sudden  news  might 
wreck  her  last  faint  chance  of  amelioration.  However, 
she  had  a  large  fund  of  courage  for  facing  evils  which 
there  is  no  avoiding  and  no  remedying,  and  she  bore  the 
announcement  better  than  I  had  ventured  to  expect.  She 
had  by  that  time  reached  Pallanza,  where  she  spent  a  very 
cold  and  very  trying  winter,  getting  rather  worse  than 
better  :  she  then  moved  on  to  Genoa,  and  shortly  to  San 
Remo,  the  Hotel  Victoria.  Here  she  called-in  a  young 
Italian  physician,  Dr.  Ansaldi,  whose  medical  training 
had  been  partly  in  England  :  he  was  extremely  attentive, 
sympathetic,  and  judicious,  and  I  feel  satisfied  that  what 
little  could  be  done  was  fully  performed  by  him.  That 
little  was  little  indeed.  The  sufferer  grew  continually 
weaker  and  weaker,  and  seldom  showed  any  even 
transient  symptom  of  improvement.  One  of  her  few 
pleasures  was  supplied  by  the  singing,  of  which  she 
heard  snatches  at  times,  of  Signora  Giannoli,  an  Italian 
vocalist  staying  at  the  same  hotel.  On  the  I9th  of 
March  1894  I  received  a  telegram  which  made  it  only 
too  probable  that,  on  reaching  San  Remo,  I  should  find 
my  wife  no  longer  alive  :  I  had  previously,  about  the  end 
of  1893  (after  some  troublesome  official  uncertainties  had 
come  to  a  close),  offered  to  go  over,  but  she  preferred 


528        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

that  I  should  not  do  so.  I  set  off  with  my  son  on  2oth 
March,  and  we  arrived  at  San  Remo  without  any  inter- 
mission. Once  again  my  wife  had  rallied  to  some 
appreciable  extent  :  the  actual  momently  danger  was 
over.  I  found  in  her  bedroom  my  good  relative 
Isabella  Cole,  along  with  others.  The  case  however 
was  by  this  time  past  hope,  though  a  force  of  vitality 
which  surprised  the  doctor  and  every  one  else  kept  death 
at  bay  from  day  to  day,  and  even  from  week  to  week. 
My  poor  Lucy  was  woefully  wasted,  incapable  of  taking 
any  adequate  nourishment,  and  constantly  harassed  by. 
her  cough  and  other  troubles.  She  was  under  no  delu- 
sion as  to  her  condition,  but  showed  no  sort  of  flinching, 
nor  any  enfeeblement  of  mind.  The  ultimate  and  un- 
evadeable  stage  was  reached  on  the  night  of  I2th  April  : 
in  the  presence  of  Olivia  and  myself,  with  one  sigh  and 
no  final  struggle,  she  ceased  to  exist.  She  lies  buried  in 
the  cemetery  of  San  Remo,  the  newer  enclosure,  within 
the  murmurous  sound  of  that  same  Mediterranean  which 
we  had  crossed  on  our  wedding-tour.  Her  age  was 
fifty  ;  the  duration  of  our  married  life,  as  nearly  as 
possible,  twenty  years. 

In  the  death  of  Madox  Brown  I  lost  not  only  a  close 
family-connexion  but  a  deeply  cherished  friend  of  forty- 
five  years'  standing.  His  efficient  professional  career 
had  lapsed  within  the  preceding  half-year  :  but  he  still 
worked  on,  brush  in  hand — the  left  hand  if  the  right 
was  crippled  with  gout.  He  was  the  most  complacent 
of  grandfathers,  and  to  my  children  the  loss  was  not 
less  great  than  to  myself. 

By  a  will  made  in  the  spring  of  1893  my  wife  left 
(practically  speaking)  the  whole  of  her  moderate 
property  in  equal  shares  between  our  four  children  : 


DEATHS   IN   THE    FAMILY  529 

to  myself  the  sole  bequest  was  her  portrait  in  crayons, 
executed  by  my  brother  in  1874.  To  this  arrangement 
I  had  no  definable  objection  :  it  only  forestalled  the  dis- 
posal which  I  should  myself  have  made  of  any  propor- 
tion which  might  have  been  assigned  to  me.  The 
property  consisted  of  the  lease  of  the  house  in  St. 
Edmund's  Terrace,  along  with  the  sum  (arising  from 
Madox  Brown's  inherited  wharf-property  near  Green- 
wich) which  had  been  conferred  on  my  wife  by  her 
marriage-settlement,  and  indeed  at  an  earlier  date, 
when  I  was  one  of  the  trustees.  The  interest  in  this 
sum  was  mine  during  my  lifetime.  There  was  also 
some  money  etc.,  chiefly  of  my  own  giving.  To  this 
was  added  the  not  very  considerable  amount  which 
came  to  her  on  her  father's  death,  she  and  Mrs.  HuefFer 
being  his  joint  legatees.  Soon  after  the  youngest  of 
my  children  reached  full  age,  April  1  902,  other  arrange- 
ments were  entered  into.  A  sum  was  paid  to  me  repre- 
senting my  life-interest  in  the  settlement-money,  and  I 
paid  another  sum  to  my  children  to  buy  up  the  lease  of 
the  house.  All  these  affairs  seemed  at  one  time  not 
a  little  complicated,  owing  to  difficulties  consequent 
upon  the  trusteeship  to  the  will  :  I  may  express  my 
obligations,  for  the  satisfactory  unravelling  of  them,  to 
a  respected  firm  of  solicitors,  Messrs.  Harston  and 
Bennett,  and  to  the  accountant  Mr.  George  Rae  Fraser 
—  a  nephew,  known  to  me  many  years  ago,  of  Mr. 
George  Rae  of  Birkenhead,  the  banker  and  picture- 
collector. 

When  I  became  a  widower,  the  only  near  relative  left 
to  me  (omitting  my  own  children  from  count)  was 
Christina  ;  and  she  had  long  been  under  sentence  of 
death.  I  will  not  here  enter  into  a  detailed  account 


mt  -a 


530        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

of  her  various  and  severe  illnesses  :  some  particulars 
are  to  be  found  in  the  biography  by  Mr.  Mackenzie 
Bell,  and  in  the  memoir  which  I  wrote  for  her  Poetical 
Works.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  from  early  girlhood  she 
was  anything  but  healthy.  Angina  pectoris  had  been 
succeeded  by  what  looked  like  incipient  consumption, 
but  it  did  not,  I  infer,  go  beyond  the  congestion  of  one 
lung.  Then  in  the  spring  of  1871  came  a  horrid  illness 
called  exophthalmic  bronchocele,  or  Dr.  Graves's  disease, 
involving  heart-trouble  and  sudden  stifling-fits  :  if  only 
in  point  of  appearance,  Christina  was  a  melancholy 
wreck.  However,  the  extremer  symptoms  of  this 
malady  abated  from  the  summer  of  1873,  and  Chris- 
tina became,  comparatively  speaking,  herself  again, 
though  more  or  less  permanently  invalided.  In  1891 
began  the  insidious  approaches  of  cancer  in  the  chest 
and  shoulder.  For  some  while  these  were  not  very 
painfully  marked  ;  but  by  May  1892  an  operation  was 
pronounced  to  be  indispensable.  It  was  successfully 
performed  by  Mr.  Lawson,  and  was  truly  a  formidable 
one.  The  ordinary  medical  adviser  of  my  sister,  since 
Sir  William  Jenner  retired  from  practice,  was  Dr. 
William  Edward  Stewart,  who  had  long  been  the 
regular  attendant  of  my  mother  and  aunts  :  he  seemed 
to  be  peculiarly  skilled  in  warding  off  the  graver  perils 
from  impaired  or  failing  constitutions,  and  Christina 
had  every  confidence  in  him,  and  this  with  good  reason. 
He  was  (or  is)  a  son  of  the  Mr.  Stewart  whom  I  have 
named  as  attending  my  father  in  his  last  illness. 

Soon  after  the  operation  my  sister  went  to  recruit  at 
Brighton,  in  charge  of  a  nurse  :  I  spent  a  fortnight  or 
so  with  her,  and  brought  her  back  to  London.  She 
may  be  said  to  have  got  well  over  the  operation  ;  and 


DEATHS   IN   THE   FAMILY  531 

for  the  remainder  of  1892  and  the  greater  part  of  1893 
her  condition,  though  truly  frail,  was  not  such  as  to 
excite  acute  or  immediate  alarm.  The  snake  however 
was  only  scotched,  not  killed.  Symptoms  of  cancer  re- 
appeared, and  a  medical  consultation  showed  that  no 
second  operation  was  possible.  Christina  therefore, 
with  calmness  and  fortitude,  and  even  (I  am  sure)  a 
large  under-current  of  satisfaction,  prepared  herself  to 
die,  and  to  die  of  one  of  those  diseases  from  which  poor 
human  nature  shrinks  the  most.  Before  the  operation 
of  1892  she  had  told  me  that  she  had  not  suffered  from 
this  malady  any  extreme  pain — not  (as  she  said)  any 
pangs  comparable  to  what  she  had  at  some  times 
endured  from  neuralgia.  And  even  in  the  later  stages 
of  the  illness,  when  she  lay  on  her  deathbed,  she,  more 
commonly  than  not,  informed  me  that  she  was  almost 
painless  :  at  other  times  the  pain  was  confessed  and 
severe.  Dropsy  in  an  arm  and  hand  supervened. 
Opiates,  more  especially  solfanel,  were  freely  administered. 
It  was  in  the  middle  of  August  1894  that  Christina 
took  finally  to  the  bed  from  which  she  rose  no  more. 
Besides  two  servants,  there  was  in  the  house  a  very 
•efficient  nurse-servant,  Harriet  Read,  who  had  previously 
attended  in  the  same  residence  on  one  or  both  of  my 
aunts.  She  was  sincerely  attached  to  my  sister,  and 
did  everything  which  the  conditions  admitted  of  to 
relieve  her  sufferings.  Towards  the  end  a  regular 
hired  nurse  was  brought  in  to  assist  her.  In  October 
Christina  received  the  unwelcome  tidings  that  Dr. 
Stewart  could  attend  her  no  longer  :  he  was  himself 
seriously  ill  with  bronchitis,  and  had  to  go  abroad.  Dr. 
Abbott-Anderson  replaced  him,  and  watched  the  case 
most  assiduously  and  capably  to  the  last. 


532        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

There  was  a  curious  vein  of  sprightliness  in  Christina, 
threading  but  in  no  way  thwarting  her  deeply  devo- 
tional nature,  and  the  extreme  (indeed  over-scrupulous) 
gravity  with  which  she  regarded  anything  which  touched 
upon  obligations,  whether  religious  or  moral,  and  the 
settled  current  of  her  self-suppression  and  self-seclusion. 
This  sort  of  sprightliness  made  itself  felt  even  after 
she  had  taken  to  the  bed  which  was  her  deathbed.  I 
recall  two  or  three  instances  ;  how,  early  in  October, 
she  volunteered  to  recite  to  me  a  childish  "  poem  "  of 
hers  (date  towards  1843)  about  a  Chinaman  and  his 
pigtail  (I  inserted  it  into  my  Memoir  of  Dante  Rossetti\ 
and  a  later  set  of  humorous  verses  upon  Charon's  boat  ; 
and  how,  before  the  end  of  the  same  month,  she  airily 
cited  Shakespear's  line,  "Thrice  the  brinded  cat  hath 
mewed,"  observing  that  a  brinded  cat  was  simply  a 
tabby  cat,  and  that  it  would  be  funny  to  print  in  the 
dramatist's  page  "Thrice  the  tabby  cat  hath  mewed."' 
Her  memory  also  was  very  clear  as  to  some  family- 
details  of  our  childhood,  and  she  kept  me  right  with 
regard  to  various  minute  points  which  I  should  other- 
wise have  misstated  in  that  memoir.  In  the  very  last 
stages  of  her  illness  however  I  had  the  sorrow  of  find- 
ing that  her  intervals  of  cheerfulness,  and  her  detach- 
ment of  mind,  were  all  gone.  In  this,  and  in  some 
momentary  fantasies  which  affected  her  visual  sense, 
I  consider  that  the  opiates  with  which  she  was 
frequently  plied  bore  their  part.  Though  she  had 
absolutely  nothing  to  reproach  herself  with,  pertaining 
to  any  portion  of  her  life,  her  spiritual  outlook  became 
gloomy  rather  than  hopeful  ;  differing  herein  entirely 
from  the  rapt  trustfulness  of  our  sister  Maria.  She 
had  always  indeed  been  intensely  humble  as  to  her 


FRANCES    AND    CHRISTINA    ROSSETTI. 

BY    DANTK    G.    ROSSETTI,     1877. 
NOW    IN    THK    NATIONAL    PORTRAIT    GALLERY. 


DEATHS   IN   THE   FAMILY  533 

own  deservings  and  undeservings.  One  day  she  said 
to  me,  "  How  dreadful  to  be  eternally  wicked  !  for  in 
hell  you  must  be  so  eternally — not  to  speak  of  any 
question  of  torments."  For  some  days  before  her 
death  she  seemed  totally  absorbed  in  unspoken  prayer  : 
I  almost  inferred  that  she  was  taking  in  its  most  literal 
sense  (and  the  literal  sense  of  Scripture  was  always  very 
potent  with  her)  the  injunction  "  Pray  without  ceasing." 
This  was  her  condition  when  the  final  moment  came  in 
the  early  morning  of  29th  December  1894,  the  sole 
person  present  being  her  nurse  Harriet  Read.  Her 
appearance  as  she  lay  lifeless  was  not  so  very  greatly 
changed  as  the  long  duration  and  severe  nature  of  her 
malady  might  have  led  one  to  dread.  She  lies  interred 
in  Highgate  Cemetery,  along  with  our  father  and 
mother,  and  our  brother's  wife.  A  gentleman  not 
known  to  me,  Mr.  Sidney  Martin,  attended  of  his 
own  accord,  and  took  a  few  photographs  of  the  scene. 

The  worthy  (and  possibly  some  unworthy)  people  who 
enlarge  upon  the  consolations  of  religion,  the  Christian's 
hope,  Addison's  "  See  how  a  Christian  can  die,"  and  the 
like,  seem  to  me  to  keep  its  terrors  unduly  in  the  back- 
ground. After  all,  the  dogma  of  Christians — the  tradi- 
tional dogma  at  any  rate,  for  there  may  be  some 
finessing  with  it  at  the  present  day — is  that  all  human 
souls  except  the  Christians  (or  particular  sects  of  Chris- 
tians) are  excluded  from  salvation  and  horrifically 
tortured,  and  that,  even  of  the  Christians  or  their  sects,  a 
large  proportion,  if  not  a  large  majority,  are  similarly 
excluded  and  tortured.  This  is  not  a  wholly  comforting 
prospect,  and  it  seems  difficult  to  deny  that,  in  com- 
parison with  it,  the  quiet  expectation  of  extinction — the 
expectation  that,  after  going  on  for  a  certain  time  in  a 


534        WILLIAM    MICHAEL    ROSSETTI 

condition  balanced  between  well-being  and  its  contrary, 
one  will  go  on  no  longer — has  some  advantages  to  offer. 
Two  of  the  most  devout  Christians  I  have  known  were 
James  Smetham  and  Christina  Rossetti.  Smetham's 
religion  drove  him  insane  :  Christina's  weighed  her 
down  at  the  last.  Not  indeed  that  she  died  despairing 
— very  far  from  that  :  but  she  died  with  a  more  immi- 
nent sense  of  unworthiness  and  apprehension  than  of 
acceptance  and  unshakeable  confiding  hope.  And  yet 
she  had  nothing  to  fear,  even  in  the  balance-scales  of 
justice — still  less  of  beneficence  and  mercy.  Her  lifelong 
motto  might  have  been,  "  Though  He  slay  me,  yet  will 
I  trust  in  Him  ";  and  she  thought  that  she  had  a  "  Father 
in  Heaven  "  not  incapable  of  slaying  her  for  ever. 

The  clergyman  who  regularly  ministered  to  Christina 
was  Prebendary  Nash,  of  Christ  Church,  Woburn 
Square.  He  preached  a  memorial  sermon  for  her  on  the 
Sunday  after  her  grave  had  closed  :  with  its  devotional 
subject-matter  and  tone  it  combined  some  of  the  quality 
of  an  elegant  literary  essay.  I  have  no  doubt  that  Pre- 
bendary Nash  treated  her,  on  her  passage  through  the 
valley  of  the  shadow  of  death,  with  the  judicious  kindli- 
ness which  was  natural  to  himself,  and  due  to  her  as  an 
exalted  Christian  as  well  as  a  suffering  woman.  She  was 
at  times  visited  likewise  by  a  clergyman  in  whom  she 
had  great  confidence,  the  Rev.  Charles  Gutch,  of  St. 
Cyprian's.  I  fancy,  but  cannot  affirm  it  with  assurance, 
that  this  cleric  (who  may  not  improbably  have  been 
Christina's  "  Father  Confessor  ")  took  it  upon  him  to  be 
austere  where  all  the  conditions  of  the  case  called  on  him 
to  be  soothing  and  solacing — a  course  as  foolish  as  it  was 
unfeeling.  I  could  not  find  that  his  advent  ever  left 
Christina  cheered,  but  rather  the  more  cheerless.  Pre- 


DEATHS   IN   THE    FAMILY  535 

bendary  Nash  after  a  while  organized  a  subscription  for 
a  memorial  in  his  church  to  Christina,  and  subordinately 
to  my  mother  and  aunts.  It  took  the  form  of  a  reredos- 
painting,  Christ  instituting  the  eucharist,  and  the  four 
Evangelists  as  recorders  of  the  event  :  Burne-Jones 
honoured  us  by  furnishing  the  design,  which  was  exe- 
cuted by  Mr.  T.  M.  Rooke. 

Christina  made  her  will  in  January  1891,  giving 
everything  to  me.  Afterwards,  owing  to  the  decease  of 
her  aunt  Eliza  (1893),  sne  came  into  some  additional 
money,  and  she  died  leaving  a  comparatively  handsome 
property — far  more  than,  during  most  of  her  years,  she 
had  looked  forward  to  possessing.  To  her  had  come 
the  substantial  bulk  of  all  the  investments  etc.  which 
had  pertained  aforetime  to  Polidoris  and  Rossettis.  She 
therefore  in  her  last  illness  very  properly  reflected  that 
it  would  behove  her  to  set  something  apart  for  bequests 
connected  with  religion.  She  would  not  interfere  with 
my  position  as  universal  legatee  :  but  she  spoke  to  me 
on  the  subject,  and  I,  without  any  hesitation,  undertook 
to  provide  in  my  own  will — and  this  I  at  once  did — for 
leaving  (subject  only  to  certain  contingencies  which  do 
not  seem  likely  to  arise)  the  same  amount,  ^2,000, 
which  she  contemplated  as  suitable  for  her  religious 
bequests.  When  I  die,  some  persons  may  be  a  little 
surprised  to  find  that  a  man  who  never  figured  as  a 
Christian  religionist  has  been  leaving  money  for  objects 
distinctively  Christian  :  however,  I  have  explained  in 
my  will  the  true  nature  of  the  transaction,  and  neither 
surprise  nor  the  absence  of  surprise  will  make  the  least 
difference  to  me  beneath  the  sod.  As  my  sister's  legatee 
I  have  had  much  more  command  of  ready  money  than 
I  had  previously  been  accustomed  to  ;  and  this  came 


536        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

just  at  the  time  when  the  contrary  was  impending,  as  my 
retirement  from  the  Inland  Revenue,  September  1894, 
reduced  my  official  income  from  a  salary  of  ^900  a  year 
to  a  pension  of  £600 — or,  as  we  call  it,  a  "  superannua- 
tion allowance." 

Christina  left  me  another  small  legacy  in  the  furry 
form  of  a  cat.  While  very  fond  of  animals  of  most 
sorts,  she  was  not  particularly  addicted  to  the  keeping 
and  fondling  of  "  pets "  ;  but  she  had  a  dark  semi- 
Persian  female  cat,  Muff,  which  had  been  with  her  for 
some  years,  the  offspring  of  another  Persian  cat,  which, 
long  domiciled  with  our  mother  and  herself,  ultimately 
disappeared  and  was  seen  no  more.  A  kitten  of  Muff, 
yellow-tabby,  had  been  consigned  to  me  shortly  before 
Christina's  death  :  Muff  arrived  very  soon  afterwards. 
A  yellow-tabby  cat  was  called  by  Dante  Gabriel  a 
"  carroty  cat "  ;  so  the  kitten  was  named  Carrots — a 
big  robust  animal,  the  most  patient  and  forbearing  of 
sons  to  his  rather  domineering  mamma,  whom  he  could 
most  easily  have  trounced.  He  absconded  at  an  early 
date.  Muff  remained  with  me  until  her  death  near  the 
end  of  1898  :  a  highly  prolific  puss  who  must,  I  pre- 
sume, have  given  birth  altogether  to  something  like  a 
hundred  kittens.  As  soon  as  a  brood  was  near  at  hand, 
she  would  retire  into  the  safe  seclusion  of  a  cupboard  or 
drawer.  Her  insatiate  appetite  for  milk  was  surprising  : 
no  milk-jug  or  other  vessel  was  sacred  [from  her  instant 
and  undisguised  irruption.  If  I  wanted  to  get  some 
milk  in  my  tea  or  cocoa  while  Muff  was  in  the  room,  I 
had  to  pour  it  instanter  from  jug  to  cup,  or  Muffs  nose 
inside  the  jug  would  have  forestalled  me.  She  would 
jump  from  the  floor  on  to  my  shoulder,  and  stolidly 
abide  there  as  long  as  permitted  ;  would  follow  me 


DEATHS   IN   THE   FAMILY  537 

upstairs  step  by  step,  rubbing  her  head  against  my 
ancles,  and  half  tripping  me  up  ;  and  would  sit  for 
hours  couched  on  my  writing-table  as  I  wrote.  The 
amount  of  pleasure  which  I  got  out  of  this  cat  and  her 
quaint  ways  was  extreme  :  some  of  it  was  clearly  due  to 
her  association  with  Christina's  memory,  but  by  no 
means  the  whole.  I  sincerely  regretted  the  too  visible 
decline  of  MurFs  vital  powers,  and  her  death,  which  took 
place  while  I  was  away  in  Italy.  There  are  few  com- 
panions more  companionable  than  a  cat.  Cats  are  of 
very  diversified  dispositions,  and  I  never  found  that 
they  are  more  "  treacherous  "  (as  the  popular  opinion 
runs)  than  other  animals.  If  the  average  man  were  not 
any  more  treacherous  than  the  average  cat,  he  would  be 
rising  rather  than  falling  in  the  moral  scale. 

The  name  of  Christina  Rossetti  is  dear  to  many  :  it 
continues  dear  after  a  lapse  of  several  years  from  her 
death,  and  may  perhaps  so  abide  for  a  long  space  of  time 
to  come,  for  hers  is  a  very  penetrative  influence,  founded 
upon  the  depth  and  spontaneity,  in  her  poems,  both  of 
the  human  personal  sentiment  and  of  the  devotional 
fervour.  In  those  days  I  kept  a  diary  (as  indeed  I  still 
do),  and  I  noted  down  in  it  many  particulars  of  her  last 
days — brief  and  sad  jottings  they  are  to  re-read.  On 
two  occasions  I  made  a  note,  less  scanty,  of  our  inter- 
views. On  looking  now  at  these  memoranda,  I  find  them 
to  give  a  somewhat  exact  picture  of  her  physical  state, 
and  of  the  shifting  eddies  of  her  mind,  less  than  two 
months  before  her  death.  Some  readers  might  feel  it  a 
privilege  to  be  present,  as  it  were,  in  her  sick  chamber  ; 
and,  as  I  discern  no  reason  to  the  contrary,  I  will  here 
reproduce  the  notes.  To  some  extent  they  go  over 
much  the  same  ground  which  has  been  covered  in  my 

II. — R 


538        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

preceding  narrative  :  this   seems  of  little  or  no  conse- 
quence. 

"Interview  with  Christina — Friday,  9  November  1894 — 

2  to  3  p.m. 

"  Christina  very  weak  ;  articulation  imperfect,  and 
difficulty  in  commanding  her  voice.  Has  a  kind  of 
catching  pain  in  the  right  side  at  intervals,  due  to  some 
temporary  exposure  or  what  not,  besides  the  usual 
troubles.  Very  little  coughing  now,  which  had  been 
violent  for  two  or  three  weeks  past.  I  opened  and  read 
to  her  three  or  four  letters  ;  the  last  being  from  an 
American  lady,  Bates,  who  writes  in  very  admiring 
terms,  and  solicits  an  autograph. 

"  Christina's  mind  has  of  late  been  very  gloomy  as  to 
her  prospects  in  eternity.  I  have  endeavoured  to  re- 
assure her  (but  am  not  the  right  person  for  any  such 
purpose),  and  have  promoted  visits,  now  daily,  from  her 
clergyman  Mr.  Nash.  To-day  she  said  nothing  of  a 
directly  gloomy  character,  but  exhibits  no  cheerfulness. 
She  asked  :  c  If  I  meet  mamma  in  the  other  world,  shall 
I  give  her  your  love  ? '  c  Yes,  to  all.' 

"  She  then  said  that  she  wished  to  obtain  my  forgive- 
ness for  two  old  matters.  One  (I  did  not  understand 
details  very  clearly)  was  that  several  years  ago,  after  I 
had  recommended  her  not  to  see  people,  she  went  to 
lunch  with  the  Cayleys,  or  received  Cayley  at  lunch — 'I 
was  so  fond  of  him.'  The  second  relates  to  early  child- 
hood :  that  she  had  promised  to  give  me  some  paints, 
but  never  did  so  (!).  Of  course,  I  told  her  that  she  had 
not  then  or  ever  committed  any  fault  against  me,  but, 
as  she  wished  it,  I  gave  her  the  most  absolute  forgive- 
ness. She  used  many  affectionate  expressions  to  me,  and 
asked  me  to  give  her  love  to  all  my  children. 


DEATHS   IN   THE   FAMILY  539 

"  She  asked  whether  I  had  c  any  entertaining  little 
bits  of  news '  ;  and  I  gave  what  I  thought  of — next  to 
nothing.  I  said  that,  in  writing  my  Memoir  of  Gabriel, 
I  have  now  got  up  to  the  date  of  The  Germ.  She  ex- 
pressed pleasure  at  my  having  got  so  far,  as  the  assist- 
ance which  she  could  give  me  in  details  (and  it  has  been 
considerable)  relates  chiefly  to  Gabriel's  earlier  years.  I 
acquiesced,  and  we  talked  a  little  about  this. 

"  I  asked  whether  she  would  like  me  to  stay  in  the 
house,  and  read  to  her,  as  from  the  Gospels.  She  says 
she  is  now  too  far  gone  for  this.  She  even  finds  that, 
in  repeating  the  Lord's  Prayer,  she  wanders  off  into 
some  other  prayer. 

"  Early  in  the  interview  she  asked  whether  there  was 
really  any  sort  of  animal  crawling  on  the  sheet.  I 
assured  her  not,  and  that,  if  any  such  notion  were  to 
beset  her  again,  she  might  safely  dismiss  it  as  a  delusion. 
All  this  she  took  very  quietly. 

"  For  some  while  past  it  has  been  settled  that  I  shall 
take  a  yellowish  kitten,  born  of  Muff  her  favourite 
semi-Persian  cat,  several  years  in  the  house.  To-day 
Christina  asked  whether  I  would  see  the  kitten,  and  I 
replied  I  would,  on  going  downstairs.  I  then  inquired 
whether  (as  in  a  previous  instance)  she  would  like  to 
have  the  kitten  up  to  her  bedside.  She  answered  that 
she  is  past  that,  and  will  probably  never  see  Muff  again. 
As  I  left  the  room,  her  last  words  were  c  Don't  forget 
about  the  kitten '  :  and  possibly  those  are  the  last  words 
I  am  to  hear  her  speak." 

"  Saturday ,  1 7  November — 3^  p.m. 

"Am  just  back  from  Christina.  She  is  in  a  trance- 
like  dose,  and  was  unaware  of  my  presence — partly  the 
effect  of  a  sleeping-draught — so  I  came  away  soon.  It 


540        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

looks  to  me  as  if  she  would  never  recover  conscious- 
ness ;  but  perhaps,  as  in  previous  instances,  I  am  mis- 
taken. A  professional  nurse  is  now  in  the  house.  I 
will  write  down  what  I  recollect  of  our  interview  of 
yesterday,  which  lasted  a  full  hour. 

"  Christina  not  in  any  acute  pain,  but  reduced  to  the 
last  extremity  ;  articulation  very  low  and  imperfect,  so 
that  she  often  had  to  strain  for  some  ten  or  twelve 
seconds  before  framing  a  syllable.1  I  talked  a  goodish 
deal,  and  she  understood  me  well.  Her  hearing  must 
continue  good  ;  and  every  now  and  then  she  looked  at 
me  with  a  natural  glance  of  the  eye,  and  even  a  natural 
smile. 

"  I  read  aloud  a  letter  addressed  to  her  by  her  Irish 
friend  Miss  Proctor.2  It  cited  the  line  from  Young's 
Night-thoughts — CA11  men  think  all  men  mortal  but 
themselves/  I  observed  on  the  substantial  truth  of 
this,  and  we  talked  of  the  merits  (which  I  have  always 
thought  very  considerable)  of  Young's  poem.  She 
tried  to  recall  the  name  of  a  certain  other  poem  of  the 
like  class,  but  failed  :  I  suggested  one  or  two  titles — not 
correct. 

"  I  told  her  that  I  thought  of  going  from  Torrington 
Square  (and  this  I  did)  to  look  at  our  birth-house 
38  Charlotte  Street,  so  as  to  make  sure  that  I  had  not 
misdescribed  it  in  my  Memoir  of  Gabriel.  I  said  that 
I  think  I  have  barely  seen  it  more  than  once  since  we 
left  50  Charlotte  Street  :  she  said  that  she  had  seen  it 
much  oftener  than  that. 

1  To  my  surprise,  a  marked  improvement  in  this  respect  took  place 
afterwards  :  I  noted  it  between  zoth  November  and  yth  December. 

.2  The  lady  who  in  the  course  of  1895  published  a  Brief  Memoir  of 
Christina  G.  Rossetti. 


DEATHS   IN   THE   FAMILY  54r 

"  We  talked  a  little  of  our  mother  :  and  I  said  that  her 
life  might  be  considered  on  the  whole  a  happy  one,  as 
lives  go — much  affection  bestowed  by  her,  and  not  a  little 
received.  Christina  did  not  reply  very  definitely,  but  I 
inferred  that  she  is  less  prepared  than  myself  to  regard 
our  mother's  life  as  happy.  After  this  (but  I  don't 
now  see  how  the  transition  occurred)  I  got  talking  a 
good  deal  about  Napoleon  and  his  surroundings — the 
Duchesse  d'Abrantes'  Memoirs  etc.  Christina  replied 
in  due  proportion  so  far  as  possible.  She  remembered 
some  particulars  from  those  memoirs  ;  such  as  that 
Madame  d'Abrantes  speaks  of  the  extreme  beauty  of 
her  mother  (to  whom  she  says  Napoleon  proposed)  ; 
that  Madame  d'Abrantes  had  at  least  one  daughter, 
etc.  She  asked  whether  I  had  read — which  I  have — 
another  book,  Memoires  sur  Josephine ;  and  concurred  in 
my  observation  that  this  shows  Josephine  in  a  very 
amiable  light.  She  asked  whether  I  remember — and  I 
do  so — that  Junot's  Christian  name  was  Andoche. 
This  was  introductory  to  her  reciting  a  quatrain,  which 
she  thinks  well  turned,  by  some  French  abbe  : — 

Le  grand  Napoleon  et  notre  brave  Andoche 

(then     Napoleon     is     compared     to     Francis     I,     and 
Junot  to) 

Bayard  sans  peur  et  sans  reproche. 

"  I  forget  the  exact  intermediate  words  :  but  I  could 
catch  them  from  poor  Christina,  greatly  clipped  as  her 
articulation  was.  Curious  that  her  mind  and  memory 
should  be  so  clear  on  such  subjects  at  such  a  time. 

"  Soon  before  leaving,  I  observed  to  her  that  I  am 
now  coming  to  her  house  every  day  ;  but  should  be 
interrupted  towards  28th  November,  and  again  towards 


WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

1 2th  December,  when  I  have  to  be  in  the  country  for 
official  work  about  pictures.  This  she  took  in  the  best 
part ;  but  in  fact  I  hardly  think  she  will  be  alive,  even 
on  28th  November.  We  kissed  and  parted. 

"  At  an  early  point  in  the  interview  she  asked  me  for 
some  water.  I  filled  a  quite  small  tumbler,  and  held  it 
to  her  lips  :  she  drank  the  whole,  but  quite  slowly. 
Said  it  was  c  delicious.*  I  remarked  that  no  doubt  she 
likes  it  much  better  than  brandy  and  water  ;  which  she 
has  this  long  while  been  compelled  to  take  in  frequent 
doses,  and  altogether  in  considerable  quantity  ;  some 
days  ago  she  told  me  that  it  is  now  ordered  in  c  by  the 
dozen/  She  replied  c  Oh  yes,*  and  that  she  dislikes 
the  brandy  very  much  ;  which  is  sure  enough  to  be  the 
case. 

"  It  must  have  been  quite  early  in  the  visit  that  she 
asked  me  whether  the  room  appears  to  me  like  what  it 
used  to  be  [the  room  was  her  front  drawing-room,  for 
her  bed,  soon  after  Christina  had  been  compelled  to 
take  to  it  finally,  was  permanently  removed  from  her 
ordinary  sleeping-room].  I  truly  replied  yes — and  that 
the  room  always  seems  well  kept.  I  think  there  must 
have  been  in  her  mind  and  eyesight  some  delusive  idea 
on  this  subject,  but  she  did  not  develop  it." 

Here  end  these  poor  jottings  of  mine  concerning  my 
good,  beloved  Christina,  admirable  and  pathetic  :  a 
memory  green  to  thousands,  sacred  to  me. 

I  will  add  a  few  words  relative  to  Mr.  Mackenzie 
Bell  and  his  biography  of  Christina  Rossetti.  I  met 
this  gentleman,  for  the  first  time,  in  Christina's  house 
some  three  or  four  weeks  before  her  decease  :  he  made 
several  visits  of  inquiry  during  her  illness.  Soon  after 
her  death  he  mooted  in  conversation  the  question 


DEATHS   IN   THE   FAMILY  543 

whether  I  was  likely  to  write  a  memoir  of  her.  I  replied 
that  on  some  grounds  I  should  wish  to  do  so  ;  but  that, 
as  intense  and  devout  Christian  faith  was  the  main 
element  in  her  life  and  in  her  writings,  I  acknowledged 
to  myself  that  I  was  unfitted  to  do  justice  to  the  work, 
adding  "  her  life  ought  to  be  written  by  a  Christian." 
Mr.  Bell  at  once  replied  that  he  met  that  requirement :  not 
long  afterwards  he  undertook  the  work.  Some  other 
particulars,  to  which  I  need  not  recur  here,  appear  in  my 
memoir  of  Christina,  in  her  Poetical  Works. 

There  were  other  family-losses  which  took  place  in 
the  interval  between  the  deaths  of  Dante  Gabriel  and 
Christina,  April  1882  to  December  1894.  My  infant 
son  Michael,  January  1883  ;  my  cousin  Teodorico 
Pietrocola-Rossetti,  June  1883  ;  my  uncle  Henry  Poly- 
dore,  January  1885;  my  wife's  aunt  Helen  Bromley,  June 
1886;  Francis  Hueffer,  January  1889  ;  my  aunt  Char- 
lotte Polidori,  January  1890;  Emma  Brown,  October 
1890;  Eliza  Polidori,  June  1893.  To  most  of  these 
losses  I  have  already  made  some  reference. 

I  recur  for  a  moment  to  the  death  of  Madox  Brown. 
Very  soon  after  that  event  Mr.  Longman  the  publisher 
was  minded  to  bring  out  a  biography  of  Brown,  and  he 
applied  to  William  Morris  as  a  person  not  unlikely  to 
undertake  it.  Morris  did  not  feel  disposed  to  do  so, 
and  he  suggested  that  Mr.  Longman  might  address  me. 
This  he  did  :  but  I  had  reasons  for  not  wishing  to  be  the 
biographer;  and  I  recommended  Mr.  Longman,  before 
anything  further  should  be  done,  to  write  to  my  wife  at 
Pallanza  as  one  of  Brown's  executors,  and  the  most 
suitable  of  all  persons  to  advise,  and  if  requisite  to 
produce  the  book.  My  wife  responded  to  this  advance ; 
and,  notwithstanding  the  desperate  condition  of  her 


544        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

health,  she  set  about  writing  the  biography.  This  was 
no  slight  effort  of  resolute  will.  What  she  wrote  was 
not  exactly  inconsiderable  in  amount,  but  it  could  not 
be  any  more  than  a  beginning.  After  learning  of  my 
wife's  death,  Mr.  Longman  again  communicated  with 
me.  I  mentioned  Mr.  Ford  Madox  Hueffer  as  being 
then  the  most  obvious  person  to  consult.  He  undertook 
the  work,  and  did  it  well,  composing  the  book,  very 
handsomely  got  up  and  illustrated,  entitled  Ford  Madox 
Brown,  1896. 


XXXII 
MY  WORK  FROM    1894   ONWARDS 

TN  my  25th  section  I  have  given  some  details  as  to  my 
later  period  of  service  in  the  Inland  Revenue  Office. 
It  was  fully  understood  that,  on  reaching  the  age  of 
sixty-five,  25  September  1894,  I  should,  under  the 
general  rule  applicable  to  the  Civil  Service,  retire  from 
the  Department.  But,  practically  speaking,  my  office 
work  closed  in  the  middle  of  March  1894,  when,  having 
received  a  telegram  showing  that  my  wife  was  in  an 
almost  hopeless  condition,  I  went  off  with  my  best  speed 
to  San  Remo.  On  returning  to  London  a  widower  in 
the  middle  of  April,  I  felt  wholly  indisposed  to  resume 
duty  for  the  brief  remainder  of  my  term.  This  I  re- 
presented to  the  Board  ;  and  they,  with  their  usual 
consideration,  allowed  me  a  lump-period  of  leave  lasting 
up  to  31  August.  On  and  from  i  September  I  was 
definitely  out  of  the  service,  to  which  I  had  given  forty- 
nine  and  a  half  years  of  my  life.  My  salary  ceased,  and 
my  pension  began. 

Even  so  however  my  connexion  with  the  Inland 
Revenue  was  not  utterly  severed. 

It  was  in  1888  that  I  was  first  asked  by  the  then 
deputy-chairman,  Lord  Iddesleigh,  whether  I  would 
accommodate  the  Board  by  acting  as  referee  for  the 
valuations,  presented  for  the  purpose  of  Estate-duty,  of 

545 


546        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

paintings  and  drawings.  I  very  willingly  assented.  Prior 
to  this  date  a  gentleman  in  the  Legacy-duty  Department 
had  been  attending  to  the  matter.  He  had  now  relin- 
quished, and  the  Treasury  had  declined  to  sanction  a 
scale  of  fees  which  the  Board  had  proposed,  to  remuner- 
ate him  for  continuing  the  work  as  an  outsider.  I 
therefore  undertook  the  task — the  reverse  of  an  uncon- 
genial one — without  any  compensation.  I  received  and 
considered  numerous  valuations,  and  reported  upon 
them  in  writing,  and  in  the  more  important  cases  I  went 
to  inspect  the  collections,  whether  in  London  or  in  other 
parts  of  England.  With  Ireland  I  had  not  anything  to 
do,  and  with  Scotland  only  in  very  exceptional  cases. 
Before  my  relinquishment  I  had  looked  at  and  reported 
upon  the  collections  left  by  Lord  Radnor,  the  Duke  of 
Cleveland,  the  Duke  of  Devonshire,  Mr.  Holford,  Lord 
Derby,  Mr.  Woolner,  Lord  Essex  ;  and,  still  more 
important  than  any  of  these  (with  the  possible  exception 
of  the  Duke  of  Devonshire),  Sir  Richard  Wallace. 
There  were  several  other  collections  besides. 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  violate  official  confidence  or 
<c  tell  tales  out  of  school " ;  or  to  say  in  which  of  these 
cases  I  considered  the  appraisements  presented  to  be 
sufficient,  and  in  which  the  reverse.  Of  intentional 
deception  or  subterfuge  I  never  found  a  symptom.  I 
need  not  perhaps  scruple  to  say  that  in  the  Wallace  case 
my  services  were  considered  to  be  deserving  of  some 
special  recognition — which  might  indeed  be  regarded  as 
covering  all  my  exertions,  otherwise  uncompensated,  up 
to  that  year,  1892.  Sir  Algernon  West  (it  was  one  of 
his  latest  official  acts)  and  the  Earl  of  Iddesleigh  recom- 
mended the  Treasury  to  make  me  a  grant  of  ^500,  and 
the  Treasury  promptly  complied. 


MY   WORK   FROM    1894   ONWARDS     547 

Before  my  retirement  from  the  Service  it  had  been 
arranged  that  I  should  thereafter  continue  this  work,  re- 
ceiving fees    as   a  "  Professional  Assistant."     The  fees 
were  at    first    merely  such  as  the  Board   happened   to 
name  in  each  individual  instance  :  but  from  the  close  of 
1895  a  regular  scale  of  fees,  suggested  by  myself,  was 
settled,  and  these  continued  always  in   force.      I   was 
conscious  of  proposing  a  very  moderate  scale.      Such  as 
it  was,  it  satisfied  me,  and  I  found  the  work  a  pleasurable 
break  in  my  routine  of  home-life.     This  employment 
enabled  me  to  see  a  large  number  of  important  collec- 
tions.    I  may  mention  (but  far  from  exhaustively)  those 
of    Lord    Lichfield,    Lady    Stanley    of  Alderley,    Mr. 
Renton,  Mr.  Sharpe,  Lord  Verulam,  Mr.  Wilbraham,  the 
Marquis  of  Northampton,  the  Marquesa  de  Santurce, 
Mr.  Waller,  the  Duke  of  Hamilton,  Sir  R.  Clare  Ford, 
Lord  Malmesbury,  Lord  Tweedmouth,  Mr.  Rathbone, 
Lord  Pembroke,  Mr.  Du  Maurier,  the  Duke  of  Leeds, 
Mr.   Henry   Moore,   Mr.  Pyke  Thompson,    Mr.  Lea 
(Worcester),  Lord  Bradford,  Sir  R.  Dyke  Acland,  Lord 
Suffolk,  the  Duke   of  Northumberland,   Mr.   Colman, 
Mr.  Ruskin,  Mr.  Fawkes,  Mr.  Leatham,  the  Duke  of 
Wellington,  the  Marquis  of  Ailesbury,   the   Duke  of 
Argyll,  Lord  de  1'Isle,  the  Marquis  of  Bute,  General 
Pitt-Rivers,  Lord  Fitzwilliam,  Mr.  George  Rae. 

In  the  great  majority  of  instances  the  object  was  to 
see  whether  the  appraised  values  were  such  as  the 
Revenue  authorities  could  reasonably  accept.  There 
were  however  a  few  cases  where  the  question  was  not 
one  of  appraisement  but  of  exemption  from  duty  :  for  a 
law  was  passed  in  1896  (surely  a  very  beneficial  one) 
exempting  such  works  of  art  as  are  heirlooms  not  sale- 
able, and  are  "  of  national  or  historic  interest."  In  this 


548        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

relation,  "  national  interest "  is  construed  as  covering 
any  works  which  would  presumably  be  accepted  for  one 
of  the  public  collections  (National  Gallery  etc.)  ;  and 
"  historic  interest "  extends  to  some  other  outlying 
works,  not  necessarily  of  leading  art-value,  such  as  por- 
traits suitable  for  the  National  Portrait  Gallery,  views 
of  important  edifices,  etc. 

The  number  of  excellent  works  which  I  have  thus 
seen — and  of  others  far  remote  from  excellence — is  ex- 
tremely large  :  I  looked  at  them  with  a  fair  amount 
of  confidence  in  my  own  judgment,  formed  almost  on 
the  instant,  and  without  fear  or  favour,  whether  to 
the  Revenue  or  the  taxpayer.  The  Board  of  Inland 
Revenue  always  showed  confidence  in  my  reports  :  the 
deputy-chairman,  Sir  Frederick  Robinson,  up  to  the 
date  of  his  relinquishment,  took  the  principal  part  in 
dealing  with  all  such  cases.  I  have  also  met  with  in- 
variable politeness  and  good  will  from  the  representatives 
of  the  deceased  picture-owners,  and  might  almost  say 
that,  the  higher  their  social  rank  may  have  been,  the 
more  considerate  and  courteous  have  they  shown  them- 
selves. They  understood  that  my  duty  was  to  be 
unbiased,  and  they  seem  to  have  given  me  credit  for 
performing  my  duty  in  a  proper  spirit.  It  has  often 
been  said  that  the  titled  and  landed  classes  of  many 
years  past  patronize  living  artists  not  at  all,  leaving  that 
function  to  moneyed  men  of  business.  My  experience 
confirms  this  statement  :  but  it  must  be  allowed  that 
several  of  "  the  stately  homes  of  England  "  are  so  full  of 
old  pictures  collected  in  time  past  that,  unless  many  of 
the  old  were  sold  off,  there  is  no  room  for  new  ones. 
Another  serious  consideration  is  that,  to  judge  from  the 
quality  of  the  works  collected  and  preserved — several 


MY   WORK   FROM    1894   ONWARDS     549 

truly  fine  things  among  a  majority  of  others  which  are 
not  only  indifferent  but  even  rubbishy — it  would  seem 
that  next  to  none  of  the  owners  or  inheritors  have  in 
their  own  minds  a  fixed  and  luminous  criterion  of  taste. 
I  have  scarcely  ever  entered  one  of  these  mansions 
without  feeling  that,  were  the  pictures  mine,  I  would  re- 
arrange them  so  as  to  give  due  prominence  to  the  good 
•ones,  and  would  get  absolutely  rid  of  a  lot  of  inferior 
stuff.  Sell  them  off  for  a  mere  bagatelle — give  them 
away — anything  rather  than  continue  housing  them. 

My  health  and  my  eyesight  have  been  good  enough 
to  allow  of  my  performing  this  picture-work  without 
any  undue  strain.  My  tale  of  years  has  suggested  to 
me  that  I  might,  on  some  grounds,  do  well  to  relinquish 
the  task  to  younger  hands.  In  fact,  in  1901,  and  again 
in  the  summer  of  1903,  I  tendered  my  resignation  to 
the  authorities  at  Somerset  House,  but  I  did  not 
receive  any  encouragement  to  carry  this  into  effect.  In 
December  1903  I  resolved  (as  a  point  of  self-respect 
rather  than  anything  else)  that  resign  I  would,  and  I 
•did  so. 

I  may  mention  here  another  work  which  I  undertook 
in  relation  to  paintings  and  other  works  of  art,  and  I 
introduce  it  not  so  much  for  its  own  sake  as  because  it 
•enables  me  to  speak  of  a  Venetian  family  whom  I  regard 
as  among  my  closest  friends  in  Italy.  In  the  summer 
of  1895  (just  as  I  nad  returned  from  a  visit  with  my 
two  younger  daughters  to  the  last  resting-place  of  my 
wife  in  San  Remo)  I  received  an  invitation  from  the 
then  Sindaco  of  Venice,  Riccardo  Selvatico,  to  act  as  one 
of  a  jury  for  awarding  the  prizes  at  an  International  Art 
Exhibition  there — being  the  first  of  the  now  well-estab- 
lished biennial  collections.  The  directors  of  the  Exhibi- 


550        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

tion  had  conceived  a  rather  novel  scheme  of  jurymen — 
that  of  selecting  them  from  among  recognized  art 
critics.  I  gladly  accepted  the  invitation,  and  went  over 
to  Venice  in  the  early  days  of  September.  It  was  the 
hottest  September  that  I  ever  experienced  anywhere  : 
a  phenomenal  degree  of  heat  which  every  one  was  talk- 
ing about.  I  found  that  my  courteous  inviter  Selvatico 
had  ceased  to  be  Sindaco  ;  there  had  been  some  scandal 
about  a  certain  Italian  picture  in  the  Exhibition  which 
was  adjudged  indecent  (and  indeed  it  was  meat  far 
beyond  the  strength  of  babes),  and  which  was  more 
particularly  offensive  to  the  parti  pretre.  It  remained  on 
the  walls,  however,  and  finally  received  a  prize  voted 
not  by  the  jury  but  by  a  popular  plebiscite.  The  new 
Sindaco  was  the  Conte  Filippo  Grimani,  a  member  of 
an  old  family  which  gave  three  Doges  to  the  Venetian 
Republic  :  as  true  a  patrician  in  his  proper  person  as  in 
his  exalted  descent.  Professor  Fradeletto  (now  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Italian  Parliament)  was  the  secretary  and 
chief  practical  manager  of  the  exhibition.  It  happens 
that  two  or  three  years  before,  he,  being  an  admirer  of 
Dante  Rossetti's  work,  had  written  to  me  asking  for 
information  as  to  some  details.  My  fellow-jurymen 
were  all  critics  of  high  distinction — Italian,  French, 
German,  and  Danish  :  Adolfo  Venturi,  who  holds  a  lead- 
ing public  post  in  relation  to  fine  art  ;  Robert  de  la 
Sizeranne,  deservedly  esteemed  for  his  books  about 
pictorial  art,  the  British  included  ;  Richard  Muther,, 
the  historian  of  modern  painting  ;  and  Professor  Lange 
of  Copenhagen.  To  my  age  rather  than  my  deserts 
they  paid  the  compliment  of  making  me  their  fore- 
man. As  such  I  had  to  take  the  initiative  in  proposing 
the  prizemen.  To  settle  this  point  was  not  altogether 


MY   WORK   FROM    1894   ONWARDS     551 

plain  sailing.  There  were  a  good  number  of  prizes> 
offered  by  various  authorities :  but  several  of  them  were 
restricted  to  particular  nationalities — Italians,  and  some- 
times only  Venetians  ;  so  that  one  could  not  in  all 
instances  simply  pick  out  the  best  exhibitor,  and  then 
the  next  best,  and  award  the  prizes  on  a  descending 
scale.  Moreover,  some  exhibitors  were  avowedly  hors 
concours,  and  others,  of  leading  eminence,  were  surmised 
to  court  the  same  position.  To  this  last  point  how- 
ever I  did  not  pay  attention.  I  proposed  my  men  ac- 
cording to  the  best  judgment  I  could  form  :  some  of  my 
candidates  passed,  others  were  superseded  by  a  majority- 
vote.  One  who  passed  was  Whistler — the  only  man 
with  an  English-sounding  name.  He  exhibited  The 
Little  White  Girl,  which  had  been  an  object  of  my  ad- 
miration from  a  much  earlier  date.  I  remember  very 
well  the  sitter  for  this  small  masterpiece.  I  obtained 
the  sanction  of  the  authorities  for  offering  a  final  prize 
of  my  own  to  the  best  remaining  exhibitor,  of  less  than 
twenty-five  years  of  age — the  best  in  my  opinion,  for 
here  the  other  jurors  were  not  concerned.  I  selected  a 
Venetian — Vettor  Cargnel,  who  contributed  a  very  able 
picture  of  a  young  woman  in  church,  and  I  have  little 
doubt  that  since  then  he  has  done  other  work  still 
better.  My  prize  was  naturally  not  of  large  amount, 
but  the  recipient,  a  prepossessing-looking  young  man, 
seemed  very  well  pleased  to  accept  it. 

I  liked  all  my  fellow-jurors — the  one  of  whom  I  saw 
the  most  was  M.  de  la  Sizeranne.  They  were,  some- 
what more  than  myself,  the  partisans  of  the  most 
modern  methods  in  art,  which  pet  telling  experiments  in 
execution,  and  do  not  much  mind  if  uncouthness  and 
want  of  ideas  are  lurking  underneath  these.  But  more 


552        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETT1 

especially  I  liked  Professor  Fradeletto,  whom,  along  with 
his  family,  I  met  continually  during  that  stay  in  Venice, 
and  every  now  and  then  in  subsequent  years,  notably 
1900.  The  Professor  is  a  fine  robust  figure  of  a  man, 
replete  with  the  heartiness  which  suits  robustness  :  he 
turns  a  broad  brow  to  whatever  comes  before  him  for 
consideration,  whether  in  fine  art,  literature,  or  life,  and 
in  politics  is  a  faithful  adherent  of  the  democratic  cause. 
His  wife,  belonging  to  the  Cornoldi  family,  is  a  lady  of 
cultivated  mind  and  of  open  friendly  character,  devoted 
to  her  promising  brood  of  two  daughters  and  a  son,  now 
grown  or  rapidly  growing  up.  They  live  in  the  Carmine 
quarter  of  Venice,  where  they  have  the  advantage,  rather 
unusual  for  Venetians,  of  a  fair-sized  garden.  I  enjoy, 
whenever  I  return  to  them,  the  garden,  the  house,  and 
most  of  all  the  inmates  of  the  house.  Riccardo  Selvatico 
was  the  bosom-friend  of  Fradeletto  ;  I  found  him 
worthy  of  all  esteem,  and  was  not  a  little  concerned  to 
see  his  death  announced  in  1902.  His  compatriots  have 
paid  him  the  well-deserved  tribute  of  setting  up  a  bust 
of  him  opposite  the  Exhibition-building  in  the  Public 
Gardens. 

The  experiment  of  appointing  critics  to  adjudge  the 
prizes  has  not  been  repeated  in  the  gatherings  subse- 
quent to  1895.  Possibly  (but  I  know  not  one  way  or 
the  other)  the  awards  decided  in  that  year  were  not  con- 
sidered very  satisfactory :  this  I  can  truly  affirm — that 
they  were  made  honestly  and  painstakingly  by  all  the 
jurors. 

I  now  proceed  to  the  literary  work  which  I  have  done 
since  I  retired  from  the  Inland  Revenue  Office  in  1894. 
I  may  say,  to  begin  with,  that  a  life  without  some  sort  of 
definite  occupation  would  not  suit  me  at  all.  To  get  up 


MY   WORK   FROM    1894   ONWARDS     553 

in  the  morning  not  knowing  "  what  to  be  at,"  to  dribble 
through  the  lagging  hours,  and  then  retire  to  bed  with- 
out a  sense  of  anything  enacted,  seems  to  be  a  very 
wretched  fate,  and  one,  in  the  case  of  a  man  who  retires 
old  from  a  long  career  of  regular  work,  far  from  un- 
likely to  lead  to  an  early  collapse  of  the  vital  energies, 
with  the  coffin  closing  the  scanty  perspective.  It  may 
be  true  that  my  performances  are  not  important  :  they 
are  however  carried  on  with  much  the  same  sort  of 
system  and  assiduity  as  my  office-work  used  to  be.  I 
give  to  them  very  nearly  as  many  hours  per  day  as  I  was 
wont  to  give  to  the  office,  along  with  the  literary  work 
which  frequently  but  not  constantly  succeeded  to  it. 
Making  occupation  for  myself  thus,  I  have  not  found 
the  time  since  I  quitted  official  life  hang  at  all  heavy  on 
my  hands.  I  have  filled  it  up  to  my  satisfaction,  actual 
or  comparative,  and  have  felt  it  a  relief  to  be  my  own 
master,  no  longer  coerced  to  a  daily  tramp  to  and  from 
Somerset  House,  and  the  desk-work  thereat.  The 
reader  of  my  preceding  narrative  will  perceive  that, 
until  I  left  the  Inland  Revenue,  I  had  never  (allowing 
for  brief  annual  vacations)  been  exempted  from  diurnal 
attendances  of  this  kind  ;  for  soon  after  attaining  seven 
years  of  age  I  entered  a  day-school,  and  I  only  quitted 
school  to  go  to  the  Excise  Office.  To  dispose  of  my 
day  as  I  chose  was  therefore,  at  the  age  of  sixty-four,  a 
novelty,  and  I  found  the  novelty  welcome. 

The  year  1894  was  a  grievous  one  to  me.  I  returned 
home  in  the  middle  of  April  from  witnessing  my  wife's 
last  hours,  only  to  find  that  my  sister,  well  known  to  be 
past  cure,  would  soon  be  taking  to  her  deathbed.  For 
some  weeks  I  did  little  in  the  nature  of  steady  work, 
apart  from  attending  to  some  business  arising  under  the 

II. S 


554        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

will  of  my  wife,  and  likewise  consequent  upon  Madox 
Brown's  decease  ;  there  were  also  my  visits  to  Christina. 
Early  in  July  I  resolved  to  bring  these  desultory  ways 
to  a  conclusion,  and  to  set  to  at  something  definite,  and 
the  project  which  I  at  once  took  up  for  fulfilment  was 
that  of  publishing  my  brother's  family-letters. 

The  idea  of  doing  this  had  presented  itself  to  me 
towards  the  autumn  of  1882,  the  year  in  which  Dante 
Rossetti  died.  I  thought,  and  I  still  think,  that  he  was 
a  good  letter-writer  ;  not  in  an  elaborate  style,  whether 
descriptive  or  discussive  or  discursive,  and  still  less  in  a 
style  giving  the  reins  to  the  "  high  horse "  of  ideal 
aspiration  in  poetry,  painting,  or  whatsoever  else.  For 
anything  of  that  sort  he  had  in  fact  no  taste  at  all.  I 
will  not  say  he  had  no  faculty,  for  a  man  who  had  so 
many  ideas  communicable  in  the  form  of  painting  and 
of  poetry,  and  who  could  express  himself  with  so  much 
readiness  and  aplomb  in  speech  and  in  writing,  must 
have  been  able  to  command  such  a  faculty,  had  he  been 
so  disposed.  But  for  any  such  form  of  self-revelation 
or  self-display — or  indeed  for  display  of  any  kind — he 
had  not  any  liking  or  personal  tendency.  Self-ex- 
pression however  is  a  very  different  thing  from  self- 
display,  and  of  self-expression  there  is  abundance  in  his 
letters,  and  not  least  in  his  family-letters  ;  whatever  his 
mood,  whether  serious  or  enjoying  or  bantering  (and  it 
often  was  the  last),  he  "gives  himself  away,"  as  the 
common  phrase  now  runs.  His  family-letters  show  all 
these  moods,  along  with  a  very  solid  fund  of  good- 
humoured  and  sympathizing  affection.  I  thought 
therefore  that  it  would  be  a  service  to  his  memory, 
at  a  date  when  not  very  much  was  known  about  his 
real  personality,  to  bring  forward  these  family-letters> 


MY   WORK   FROM    1894   ONWARDS     555- 

and  show  the  man  as  he  was,  under  conditions  which 
neither  invited  nor  permitted  any  disguise.  I  put 
together  his  letters  addressed  to  me  ;  Christina,  using 
a  very  free  hand  for  suppressing  any  laudatory  items 
or  passages,  did  the  like  with  the  letters  which  she  had 
received  ;  and  our  mother,  though  her  heart  sank  at 
times  under  a  task  so  trying  to  her  feelings,  added  to 
the  store.  There  were  some  few  letters  besides  to  other 
members  of  the  family.  To  all  these  materials  I  wrote 
explanatory  notes  wherever  needed. 

My  friend  Watts-Dunton  undertook  to  co-operate 
with  me  by  writing  a  biography.  I  need  not  say  that 
he  was  excellently  well  qualified  to  do  so,  from  his  own 
knowledge  of  the  last  ten  years  of  Dante  Rossetti's 
life  ;  and  I  furnished  him  with  some  details  of  earlier 
years,  and  was  ready  to  supply  any  further  amount  of 
these.  That  I  should  myself  become  my  brother's 
biographer  was  far  from  my  wish.  I  saw,  not  less 
clearly  than  the  mass  of  readers  would  be  certain  to 
see,  the  legitimate  objections  to  such  a  course.  The 
firm  of  Ellis  and  Scrutton  (now  named  Ellis)  which 
had  succeeded  to  the  business  originally  conducted  by 
Frederick  S.  Ellis,  entered  into  an  agreement  with 
Watts-Dunton  and  myself  to  publish  the  book. 

My  part  in  this  project  was  completed  (I  think)  before 
the  spring  of  1883.  I  have  never  seen  any  portion  of 
the  biography  that  was  undertaken  by  my  friend. 
Occasionally  I  asked  him  about  it,  and  the  publishers 
told  me  now  and  again  that  they  had  done  the 
same.  To  hazard  a  conjecture  why  the  work  remained 
unexecuted  is  not  my  part  ;  I  understood  however 
that  some  acquaintances  of  my  brother,  as  especially 
Charles  Augustus  Howell  and  William  Bell  Scott,  were 


556        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

deemed  by  my  intending  colleague  to  be  prolonging 
their  lives  unduly,  and  that  they  had  better  be  disposed 
of  underground  before  the  biography  came  to  light. 
They  were  both  dead  some  while  prior  to  1894,  but  the 
biography  remained  "far  in  the  unapparent."  So  I 
determined  that  I,  as  a  pis  aller^  would  be  the  biographer 
as  well  as  the  compiler.  Early  in  July  1894  I  wrote 
to  Watts-Dunton  to  say  so,  and  we  had  some  personal 
talk  over  the  matter.  He  raised  no  objection,  and 
stated  that  he  would  not  now  persist  with  the  project  of 
a  complete  memoir,  but  would  at  some  time  write  his 
personal  reminiscences  of  Dante  Rossetti.  These  I 
should  enjoy  seeing  ;  and  certain  it  is  that  there  would 
be  a  large  and  laudatory  body  of  readers  to  share  in  my 
enjoyment. 

I  found  in  1894  a  good  deal  of  preliminary  work  to 
be  done  with  my  brother's  letters,  re-inserting  some 
excised  passages,  and  adding  those  addressed  to  my  wife 
— also  reading-up  a  number  of  books  and  articles  about 
him,  or  somehow  relevant  to  his  life.  Of  these,  to  my 
astonishment,  I  traced  (belonging  to  myself)  no  less  than 
260.  It  was  on  4  September  that  I  commenced  the 
actual  writing  of  the  memoir.  I  have  defined  in  some 
previous  pages  my  view  of  the  proper  function  of  a 
biographer,  which  amounts  generally  to  this — that  he 
ought  to  care  more  for  a  candid  than  commendatory 
attitude  of  mind,  and  that,  in  portraying  his  original,  he 
does  him  no  real  disservice  by  stating,  with  fairness  and 
without  asperity,  minor  blemishes  and  peculiarities, 
along  with  the  leading  lineaments  of  character  and 
faculty.  I  accorded  this  treatment  to  my  brother,  as  I 
should  have  done  to  any  one  else.  I  am  conscious  that 
some  people  have  thought  that  my  presentment  of  him 


MY   WORK   FROM    1894   ONWARDS     557 

is  such  as  to  derogate  somewhat  from  the  regard  to 
which  he  is  properly  entitled.  That  they  should  think 
so — i.e.,  that  they  abstract  from  his  great  gifts  and  fine 
performances  an  ideal  superior  to  what  I  show  forth — is 
so  far  gratifying  to  me  ;  and  most  assuredly  the  thing 
least  consonant  with  my  intention  was  to  "  run  him 
down."  None  the  less  I  continue  of  opinion  that  1 
wrote  upon  the  right  principle  ;  and  moreover  that  a 
biographer  who  is  also  a  near  relative  is  exceptionally 
bound  to  apply  rouge  or  pearl-powder  to  no  cheek,  and 
couleur  de  rose  to  no  fact. 

I  finished  the  memoir  on  10  April  1895.  ^n  dimen- 
sions, and  to  some  extent  in  subject-matter,  it  was  the 
most  solid  task  I  had  ever  undertaken,  and  still  remains 
so,  save  for  the  penning  of  the  present  Reminiscences. 
The  memoir  forms  volume  i  in  the  two-volume  book 
(Family-letters  with  Memoir)  which  was  brought  out  in 
December  of  the  same  year.  This  book  sold  well  at  the 
first  start ;  and  my  belief  is  that  it  would  have  con- 
tinued to  sell  well,  and  might  have  gone  into  a  second 
edition,  but  for  an  unfortunate  clash  and  subsequent 
lingering  delay  as  to  its  getting  reviewed  in  The  Athenaeum. 
Who  should  review  a  book  of  mine,  or  in  what  spirit  it 
should  be  reviewed,  is  a  matter  with  which  I  never  con- 
cerned myself  in  the  least.  In  the  present  instance 
Watts-Dunton  wished  of  his  own  accord  to  deal  with  the 
book  in  The  Athenaum^  but  he  learned  that  he  had  been 
already  forestalled  by  the  regular  art-critic  of  the  paper, 
my  old  and  tried  friend  Stephens.  To  have  Watts- 
Dunton  as  the  reviewer  would  have  been  highly  pleasing 
to  me  :  to  have  Stephens  instead  would  have  been 
satisfactory — on  some  grounds  even  equally  satisfactory. 
The  latter  however  found  reason  for  not  taking  up  the 


558        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

book  at  once  :  when  at  last  he  did  take  it  up,  and  sent 
in  a  notice  of  it,  the  editor  opined  that  the  lengthened 
interval  of  time  was  such  as  not  to  admit  of  the  insertion 
of  any  review.  I  have  seen  these  simple,  but  to  me 
rather  vexatious,  facts  wholly  misstated  in  some  other 
periodical  :  for  there  are  press  critics  who  always  know 
more  than  they  are  acquainted  with. 

For  the  purpose  of  writing  this  memoir  I  naturally 
had  to  look  up  a  great  number  and  variety  of  family 
papers — letters,  diaries,  and  the  like.  My  brother,  I 
may  here  remark,  did  not  leave  behind  him  any  sort  of 
diary  ;  nor  do  I  believe  that  he  ever  kept  one  except 
towards  1847-8.  That  early  diary  he  must,  still  youth- 
ful, have  destroyed  :  were  it  now  extant,  it  would  be  of 
no  little  interest,  as  attesting  the  first  beginnings  of  the 
Praeraphaelite  movement.  I  recollect  scarcely  any  pas- 
sage in  it,  save  one  which  spoke  warmly  of  Holman 
Hunt's  rigid  self-denial  in  his  pursuit  of  art  through  all 
difficulties  :  there  was  the  phrase,  "  One  of  these  days 
the  facts  will  be  known,  and  men  will  wonder  and 
admire."  After  getting  together  the  letters  and 
memoir,  I  resolved  to  make  a  kind  of  family-compila- 
tion out  of  the  large  remaining  mass  of  materials  at  my 
disposal.  This  compilation  began  with  papers  relating 
to  my  grandfather  and  father,  as  far  back  as  about  1800, 
and  went  on  to  the  year  1862,  the  date  of  the  death  of 
my  brother's  wife.  The  bulk  of  this  compilation  was 
no  doubt  formidable  ;  and  it  must  have  included  some 
matter  not  particularly  attractive  to  British  readers, 
though  I  thought  that  on  the  whole  the  various  items 
deserved  publication.  As  several  letters  from  Mr. 
Ruskin  were  inserted,  I  found  it  necessary  to  offer  the 
manuscript,  in  the  first  instance,  to  Mr.  George  Allen, 


MY   WORK   FROM    1894   ONWARDS     559 

who  during  Ruskin's  lifetime  was  the  only  publisher 
empowered  to  bring  out  any  of  his  writings.  Mr. 
Allen  quite  repudiated  the  idea  of  publishing  the  entire 
compilation  :  but  he  was  willing  to  issue  a  minor  por- 
tion of  it,  which  in  1899  appeared  under  the  title  Ruskin, 
Rossetti,  Pr*raphaelitism,  a  handsome  illustrated  volume. 

An  amusing  press  comment  was  made  upon  this  book. 
A  somewhat  distinguished  writer,  reviewing  it  in  a  spirit 
amicable  enough,  said  that  it  was  questionable  whether 
the  grandchildren  of  the  persons  whose  writings  consti- 
tuted the  volume  would  be  well  pleased  to  see  some  of 
the  items  thus  printed.  Now  the  principal  writers  in 
that  book  are  Ruskin,  Dante  Rossetti,  William  Bell 
Scott,  and  Madox  Brown.  Ruskin,  it  is  pretty  well 
known,  had  no  children,  and  consequently  no  grand- 
children ;  Dante  Rossetti  the  same ;  Scott  the  same. 
Brown  had  altogether  eight  grandchildren,  seven  of  them 
surviving.  Four  of  these  seven  are  my  own  children, 
and  I  might  perhaps  be  as  good  a  judge  of  their  senti- 
ments as  the  reviewer.  With  the  other  three  I  am 
familiar,  and  I  never  heard  of  any  objection  on  their 
part. 

After  Mr.  Allen  had  excluded  the  great  majority  of 
my  big  family-compilation,  I  was  still  inclined  to  publish 
as  much  of  it  as  I  could,  and  I  looked  out  for  other 
publishers,  using  the  agency  of  the  Authors'  Syndicate, 
now  housed  in  Southampton  Street,  Strand.  Through  the 
good  offices  of  this  body,  I  have  published  four  further 
portions  of  the  material,  (i)  in  The  Pall  Mall  Magazine, 
1898,  Some  Scraps  of  Verse  and  Prose  by  Dante  Gabriel 
Rossetti ;  (2)  Pr<eraphaelite  Diaries  and  Letters,  1 900  ; 
(3)  Gabriele  Rossetti,  a  Versified  Autobiography r,  translated 
and  supplemented  by  William  M.  Rossetti,  1901  ;  (4)  the 


560        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

fragmentary  poem  by  William  Blake,  The  Passions^  in 
The  Monthly  Review,  1903.  I  need  not  dwell  upon  the 
contents  of  these  publications.  In  No.  2  the  item  of 
chief  (yet  not  I  hope  of  sole)  interest  is  the  diary  of 
Madox  Brown,  showing  his  pictorial  work  from  1 847  to 
1856,  and  the  straits  to  which  he  was  frequently  put  to 
"  keep  the  wolf  from  the  door " — which  somehow  he 
always  managed  to  do  in  the  temper  of  an  eminently 
independent  and  honourable  man.  To  bring  out  my 
father's  autobiography  was  a  great  gratification  to  me — 
indeed,  I  regarded  it  as  little  short  of  a  filial  obligation, 
now  that  circumstances  made  it  feasible  for  me  to  attend 
to  such  a  matter.  I  translated  into  blank  verse  the 
rhymed  metre  of  the  original  ;  my  chief  object  in  this 
alteration  being  to  secure  strict  adherence  to  meaning,  to 
the  comparative  disregard  of  form.  My  blank  verse 
has  been  mostly  pronounced  excessively  bad.  If  it  is  so, 
I  regret  the  fact,  but  still  hold  that  I  was  warranted  in 
using  that  form  of  verse  and  in  sticking  close  to  my 
text.  I  openly  professed  in  the  book  itself  that  my 
father's  narration  was  not  highly  poetical,  and  that  my 
own  was  less  so.  There  is  at  present  a  prospect  that  the 
original  Italian  autobiography,  with  some  supplementary 
matter  founded  upon  what  I  wrote,  may  be  published  in 
Rome,  or  elsewhere  in  Italy.  This  had  naturally  been 
much  in  my  thoughts  from  the  first. 

Another  literary  matter  (of  quite  a  different  sort)  in 
which  I  have  been  concerned  of  late  is  the  edition  of 
Dickens  and  also  of  Thackeray,  which  an  American 
publisher,  Mr.  Sproul,  has  undertaken  to  issue  on  a 
vast  scale,  and  at  an  enormous  price.  My  share  in  this 
scheme  has  been  quite  small,  and  is  only  worth  mention- 
ing through  the  interest  attaching  to  the  authors  them- 


MY   WORK   FROM    1894   ONWARDS     561 

selves  and  the  scale  of  publication.     I  was   invited  to 
write  the   introduction  to  Dickens's  Child's  History  of 
England  and  his  Pictures  from  Italy,  and  to  a  volume  of 
Thackeray's   Prose  Miscellanies  belonging  principally  to 
his  earlier  years.     This  I  did. 

In  that  family-compilation  which  I  offered  to  Mr. 
Allen  there  were  numerous  other  items  which  remain 
unpublished.  Most  of  these  I  at  once  set  aside,  as  not 
being  clearly  serviceable  in  any  different  connexion. 
One  thing  I  have  tried  to  publish,  but  as  yet  without 
success  :  the  Diary  of  Dr.  John  Polidori,  written  while 
he  was  associated  with  Byron  and  Shelley.  I  had  occasion 
to  refer  to  it  on  page  385,  and  I  am  rather  surprised 
that  no  publisher  has  been  minded  to  take  it  up. 

The  compilation  in  question  went  on,  as  I  have  said, 
to  the  beginning  of  1862  ;  but  there  was  no  reason  why 
it  should  not  be  prolonged  beyond  that  date.  I  have  in 
fact  prolonged  it.  One  instalment  is  the  Rossetti  Papers, 
1862  to  1870  (published  in  1903)  :  it  continues  to  show 
the  career  of  my  brother  (and  of  others)  up  to  the  time 
when  his  first  original  volume,  Poems,  was  issued.  I 
have  prepared  another  instalment  going  up  to  the 
autumn  of  1876,  when  Dante  Gabriel,  after  some 
shiftings,  resettled  in  London  ;  and  a  still  further  in- 
stalment extending  to  his  death  in  1882.  The  last 
instalment,  also  mostly  done,  goes  on  to  December 
1894,  the  date  of  Christina's  death  :  that  would  be  the 
conclusion. 

No  one  perhaps  has  accused  me  of  devoting  to  com- 
pilations of  this  class  time  which  might  be  better  em- 
ployed upon  original  work  of  my  own.  And  the 
reason  is  obvious — namely,  that  I  have  not  an  origin- 
ating mind,  and  naturally  am  not  credited  by  others 


562        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

with  having  one.  But  it  has  been  propounded  in 
many  quarters  that  the  compilations  are  in  themselves 
excessive — that  I  have  offered  to  readers  more  par- 
ticulars about  members  of  my  family  than  they  care  to 
digest.  I  do  not  see  that  this  charge  is  well  based. 
There  are  very  few  books  which  appeal  to  readers  of  all 
sorts  :  one  book  appeals  to  one  set  of  readers,  and 
another  book  appeals  to  a  different  set.  Thousands 
and  tens  of  thousands  of  people  don't  care  to  know 
anything  about  Dante  or  Christina  Rossetti,  or  Madox 
Brown,  or  the  rest  of  us  :  but  there  are  some  tens  and 
some  hundreds  who  do  care.  To  these  tens  and  hun- 
dreds I  offer  my  authentic  compilations  ;  wholly  (and  I 
conceive  rightly)  unregardful  of  the  fact  that  a  vastly 
larger  number  of  people  pay  no  heed  to  them,  or  to 
anything  else  bearing  upon  the  same  range  of  topics. 
Other  writers  do  not  possess  the  materials  which  are  at 
my  disposal.  I  have  seen  fit  to  use  them,  and  I  judge 
that  in  doing  so  I  have  been  more  serviceable  than 
importunate. 

This  present  book  of  Reminiscences  is  somewhat  in 
the  same  line,  but  it  follows  a  quite  different  plan. 
This  is  a  personal  consecutive  narration,  taking  no 
appreciable  count  of  documentary  data  of  an  old 
period  ;  whereas  those  other  volumes  consist  of  docu- 
ments, to  which  my  own  adjuncts  are  merely  by  way  of 
annotation  or  exposition. 

I  will  close  by  mentioning  a  small  matter  as  to  which 
some  feeling  of  self-gratulation  may  be  pardoned  me. 
Up  to  1898  the  reports  of  the  Royal  Literary  Fund 
contained  in  paragraph  i  of  the  "  Address "  the 
following  words  :  "  Every  author  without  exception  is 
excluded  [i.e.  from  c  the  bounty  of  the  Institution '] 


MY   WORK   FROM    1894   ONWARDS     563 

whose  writings  are  offensive  to  morals  or  religion." 
On  receiving  these  reports  as  an  incentive  for  a  sub- 
scription, I  more  than  once  commented  upon  this 
clause  as  being  narrow-minded  and  even  silly  :  the 
strict  application  of  it  would  have  excluded  not  only 
many  of  the  "  illustrious  obscure,"  but  several  of  the 
illustrious  as  well  :  we  have  only  to  reflect  upon  Shelley 
and  Byron,  as  judged  by  the  bigwigs  of  their  own  days. 
From  the  address  of  1899  and  of  subsequent  years  this 
clause  has  disappeared.  I  am  not  at  liberty  to  say  how 
I  know  that  my  personal  remonstrance  was  efficacious, 
but  I  do  know  it  none  the  less. 


XXXIII 
CONCLUDING    WORDS 

A  MAN  who  undertakes  to  write  his  Reminiscences 
may  not  unnaturally  be  minded  to  give,  besides  a 
compendium  of  facts,  some  slight  self-estimate — an  ac- 
count of  what  he  perceives  or  supposes  his  essential 
qualities  and  capabilities  and  deficiencies  to  be.  He  is 
sure  to  find  much  to  define,  not  a  little  to  blame,  some- 
thing or  other  to  uphold.  I  shall  however  resist  any 
such  temptation,  and  shall  leave  the  reader  to  put  his 
own  construction  upon  what  he  remarks  in  this  book,, 
and  in  whatsoever  else  he  may  know  concerning  me. 

On  the  other  hand  it  may  be  permitted  me  to  say  a 
little — a  very  little — about  the  progression  of  public 
opinion  or  sentiment  in  my  time.  As  to  material 
developments — the  increase  of  wealth,  the  advances  of 
science  and  invention,  the  acceleration  of  transit,  and 
the  consequent  fusion  of  races  and  interests — I  do  not 
pretend  to  speak  :  they  are  in  one  degree  or  another 
patent  to  all  of  us,  and  I  have  no  qualification  for  en- 
larging upon  them.  Matters  more  impressive  to  my 
own  mind  and  personality  are  the  immense  development 
in  the  anti-dogmatic  and  anti-traditional  tendencies  in 
religion  ;  the  freer  field  open  to  women,  and  their  in- 
creased independence  of  character  and  mental  atmo- 
sphere ;  the  advance,  limited  though  it  as  yet  is,  in 

564 


WILLIAM  MICHAEL  ROSSETTI,   1905. 


t 


CONCLUDING   WORDS  565 

Socialistic  ideas  and  schemes ;  and  (in  this  country  at 
least)  the  enormous  increase  of  artistic  activity  and  the 
multiform  phases  of  art.  Not  indeed  that  art  has  in  all 
respects  improved,  but  that  the  number  of  its  practi- 
tioners, and  of  its  sincere  or  semi-sincere  votaries,  and 
the  scale  of  its  operations,  have  augmented  prodigiously. 
It  must,  I  fear,  be  conceded  that,  while  the  arts  of  form 
have  progressed,  poetry  has  of  late  receded.  In  my 
prime  there  were  several  poets  of  exalted  rank  ;  but, 
since  the  advent  of  Swinburne  now  some  forty  years 
ago,  where  is  the  new  great  poet  ? 

While  the  movement  in  speculative  and  social  ideas 
has  been  one  of  expansion  and  enlightenment,  I  cannot 
but  think  that  in  political  temper  we  have  retrogressed, 
and  this  not  in  the  United  Kingdom  alone.  The 
enthusiasm  for  ideals,  which  made  possible  such  a 
colossal  upheaval  as  the  great  French  Revolution,  is 
nowhere  apparent  now.  A  Robespierre  stood  for  "  la 
vertu"  though  he  may  have  made  some  considerable 
misapplications  of  his  watchword  :  a  Bismarck  stood  for 
blood  and  iron,  and  a  Cecil  Rhodes  for  dividends, 
u  commercial  assets,"  and  square  miles.  The  era  of 
Giuseppe  Mazzini  and  Abraham  Lincoln  looks  remote 
from  us.  Carlyle's  appeals  for  force  seem  in  the  long 
run  to  have  had  a  more  distinct  sequel  than  his  pleas 
for  righteousness.  But  it  would  be  weak  to  suppose 
that  because  there  is  now  an  ebb,  there  will  not  at  some 
time  be  a  spring-tide.1 

Carlyle  in  1850,  in  his  Latter-day  Pamphlets  named 
Downing  Street  and  The  New  Downing  Street,  gave  a 
shrewd  forecast  of  what  we  see  increasingly — the  decay 

1  All  this  was  written  in  1903.  Had  I  been  writing  in  1906,  I 
might  have  found  something  further  to  say. 


566        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 

of  parliamentary  discussion,  and  elocutionary  debate  of 
grievances,  and  the  strengthening  of  the  administrative 
control  of  public  affairs.  I  am  not  sure  that  the  fact 
that  this  Carlylean  augury  was  thus  made  long  ago  has 
been  much  observed  or  commented  upon,  although  the 
outcome  itself,  as  a  matter  of  present  and  future  moment, 
has  been  anxiously  remarked.  Imperialism  has  a  voice 
of  its  own,  loud  enough  to  drown  echoes  surviving 
from  a  past  generation. 

Two  mottoes  which,  trite  as  they  are,  might  be 
adopted  by  a  man  who  writes  his  reminiscences,  are 
TvwOi  creavrov  and  Memento  Mori.  Since  I  began  this 
narrative  many  persons  here  mentioned,  who  were 
known  to  me  and  alive,  have  passed  into  the  silence  of 
the  grave.  I  may  mention  J.  Hungerford  Pollen, 
Henry  T.  Wells,  Ernest  Gambart,  J.  T.  Nettleship, 
John  Brett,  Sir  Robert  Micks,  George  Rae,  Riccardo 
Selvatico,  Gaston  Paris,  Sir  J.  Noel  Paton,  Philip  James 
Bailey,  J.  Birkbeck  Hill,  James  MacNeill  Whistler, 
Frederick  Sandys,  George  F.  Watts,  Val  Prinsep, 
William  Sharp,  John  P.  Seddon,  Jessie  W.  Mario, 
Richard  Garnett.  Whose  turn  is  to  come  next  ? 


INDEX 


Abbott- Anderson,  Dr.,  531 
Abrantes,  Due  de,  541 
Abrant&s,  Duchesse  de,  541 

—  Memoirs  of,  541 

Academy,  The  (review),  95,  468-70 
Adams,  Francis,  504-5 

—  Songs  of  the  Night,  by,  504-5 

—  Tiberius,  by,  505 
Adelphi  Theatre,  190 
Adrienne  Lecouvreur  (play),  189 
Agresti,  Antonio,  37,  453-4 

—  Writings  and   Translations,   by, 

454»  519 

Agresti,  Olivia,  429,  437-8,  446,  448- 
9,  453-4,  465-7,  528 

—  Life  of  Giovanni  Costa,  by,  454 
Agresti,  Olivia,  and  Helen  Angeli, 

450,  466 

—  A  Girl  among  the  Anarchists,  by, 
450,  466 

Albany  Street,  London,  in 

1 66,  London,  112,  292 

Aldrich,  Charles,  508-9 

—  Mrs.,  509-10 
Algeria,  457 

All  Saints  Sisterhood,  421,  427 
Allan,  Captain,  462-4 
Allen,  George,  558-9 
Allingham,  Mrs.,  86 

—  Wm.,  86,  233-4,  257,  431 
Allport,  Dr.,  462 

—  Mrs.,  432,  464-5 

—  Roland,  464-5 
Alma-Tadema,  Lady,  134,  323 

—  Sir  Lawrence,  323 
Alps,  The,  347-8 

Ancoats  Brotherhood,  The,  457,  493 
Andrews,  Rev.  Dr.,  84 
Andrieu,  Jules,  507 
Angeli,  Diego,  456 

—  Gastone,  37,  456 

—  Helen   M.    M.,   278-9,   434,   446, 
448-9,  455-7,  462-5,  508-9 

—  D.  G.  Rossetti,  Memoir  by,  455 

—  Madox  JSrown,  Memoir  by,  455 


Ansaldi,  Dr.,  527 

Anthony,  Mrs.  (senr.),  141 

—  W.  Mark,  138,  140-2 

Antwerp,  432 

Appleton,  Dr.,  468-70 

Appleyard,  Rev.  Mr.,  127 

Arabian  Nights,  The,  451 

Ariosto,  30 

Arlington  Street,  38,  London,  107 

Armitage,  Edward,  159 

Art  Journal,  The,  xi,  476 

Artist,  The  (magazine),  180 

Aspinall,  169 

Athenceum,  The,  68,  78-9,  299,  380, 

470-2,  522-3,  557 
Atlantic  Monthly,  The,  301,  483 
Australia,  24,  85,  150,  169,  449,  455, 

462,  465,  467,  504 
Authors'  Syndicate,  The,  559 
Avenue  Road,  London,  89 


B,  510,  511 

B  (w:  E??  50-1 

Bailey,  Philip  J.,  101,  497-8,  566 

—  Angel  World,  The,  by,  101 

—  Festus,by,  101,  123,  497-500 
Bajardo,  436 

Baldwin,  Mrs.,  230 

—  The  Shadow  on  the  Blind,  etc., 
by,  230 

Bile,  457 

Barlow,  T.  O.,  236 
Barnard,  Mr.,  38 
Barrington,  Mrs.  Russell,  521 
Bastian,  Dr.  Charlton,  89 

—  Mrs.,  89 

Bath,  Marchioness  of,  38,  108 
Bazaine,  Marshal,  488 
Beautiful  Poetry  (selection),  79 
Beddoes,  Thomas  L.,  101 

—  Death's  Jestbook,  by,  101 
Bedford,  Paul,  190 
Bedlam,  269-70 


567 


568 


WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 


Behnes,  W.,  63-4 
Belgium,  344,  355,  432 
Bell,  Mackenzie,  6,  542-3 

—  Memoir  of  Christina  Rossetti,  by, 

530,  542 

Belloc,  Mme.,  173 
Betts  Weekly  Messenger,  8 
Bene",  Miss,  438 

—  Mrs.,  438 
Bennett,  Rev.  Dr.,  108 
Bennis  and  Co.,  455 
Benson,  A.  C.,  395 
Biarritz,  438-9 
Bible,  The,  121,  127 
Bientina,  347 

Birchington-on-Sea,  144,  325,  517 
Birmingham,  442,  482,  519-20 
Blake,  Mrs.,  307,  378 

—  Wm.,  302,  304,  307-8 

—  Aldine  Edition  of,  308,  378 

—  Dante  designs  by,  307 

—  The  Passions,  by,  560 
Blanchard,  Sidney,  169 
Blind,  Karl,  506 

—  Mathilde,  388,  428 
Bloomsbury  Square,  London,  421 
Boccaccio,  399 

—  Filostrato,  by,  399-400 
Bodichon,  Dr.,  172 

—  Mrs.,  171-2 

Bodleian  Library,  Oxford,  361 

Bognor,  429 

Bolton,  454 

Bonvicino  da  Riva,  Fra,  399 

—  Zinquanta  Cortexie  da  Tavola,by, 

399 

Boscombe  Manor,  363 
Boughton,  G.  H.,  278 
Bourget,  Paul,  490 
Bournemouth,  434,  506 
Bowen,  Miss,  in 
Boyce,  George  P.,   144,  146,  152-3, 

43 i 

Boyd,  Miss,  132,  263,  349,  357 
Brantwood,  179,  327 
Brett,  John,  90,  566 
Bridgeman,  169 
Brighton,  343,  530 
Brimley,  George,  100-1 
British  Museum,  84,  87-8,  331,  440 
Broadway,  The  (magazine),  82-3 
Bromley,  Helen,  137,  429,  543 

—  Sir  Richard  M.,  137 
Brompton  Cemetery,  428 
Brook,  Gustavus  V.,  190 
Brookbank,  Shottermill,  305 
Brown,  Dr.  John,  145 

—  Elizabeth,  115,  136,  433 

—  Emma,  136-7,  442,  495,  543 


Brown,  Ford  Madox,  37,  60-1,  68,  97, 
no,  136, 139,  142,  145, 154,  194,  209, 
216,  218,  224,  227,  233,  245-7,  265, 
277,  291,  325,  329,  333,  337-8,  388, 
404,  420,  424,  428,  430-31,  440,  442, 
477-8,  490,  492-3,  495-6,  500,  514, 
518-19,  526,  528,  543,  554,  559 

—  Byron  and  Mary  Chaivorth,  by, 

49 i 

—  Chaucer  at  Court  of  Edward  III, 

by,  137,  145.  J49 

—  Christ  Washing  Peters  Feet,  by, 
68,  325 

—  Crabtree  observing  the  Transit  of 
Venus,  by,  175 

—  Diary  of,  560 

—  Monument  to  D.  G.  Rossetti,  by, 

244 

—  Portraits  of  Lucy  and  Olivia  Ros- 
setti, by,  423 

Brown,  Oliver  Madox,  137,  299,  329, 
334,  424-6,  489-91,  493 

—  Divale-bluth,  The,  by,  175,  425 

—  Gabriel  Denver,  by,  425 

—  Posthumous  writings  of,  426 
Browning,  Miss,  244 

Browning,  Mrs.,  232,  236,  238,  239, 
242-4,  268,  471 

—  Aurora  Leigh,  by,  236 

—  Drama  of  Exile,  etc.,  by,  232 
Browning,  Robert,  101,  189,  232-42, 

244-5,  254,  256,  471,  481 

—  Bells  and  Pomegranates,  by,  232 

—  Christmas  Eve  and  Easter  Day, 


by,  234 

—  Lii 


ippo  Lippi,  by,  236 

—  Paracelsus,  by,  233 

—  Pauline,  by,  234 

—  Sordello,  by,  233,  481-2 
Browning,  Robert  B.,  236-7 

—  Society,  481 
Bruges,  441 

Brunswick  Place,  Frome,  109 
Buchanan,    Robert,    245,    334,   380, 
405,  522-3,  525 

—  Fleshly  School  of  Poetry,  by,  516, 
521-2 

—  God  and  the  Man,  by,  522 
Bull,  Mrs.,  38 

Burcham,  Robert  P.,  in 
Burges,  Wm.,  146,  154-5 
Burlington  Fine  Arts  Club,  224,  318, 

394,  52i 

Burne-Jones,  Lady,  210,  229,  477 
Burne-Jones,  Sir  Edward,  194,  201, 

208-14,  216,  218,  223-4,  228,  285, 

318-19,  430-1 

—  Reredos  at  Christ  Church,  Lon- 
don, by,  521,  535 


INDEX 


569 


Burne-Jones,  Sir  Philip,  230 
Burrows,  Canon,  128 
Burton,  Sir  F.  W.,  323 
Burton,  Wm.  S.,  226 

—  The  Blessed  Damozel,  picture  by, 
226 

Butler,  Mrs.  Fanny,  190 
Butts,  Captain,  306 
Byron,  Lady,  269 

—  Lord,  337,  352,  378,  384,  512,  561 


C.  (R.  S.),  5o 

Caen,  346 

Cahen,  Comtesse  Edmond  de,  492 

Caine,  Hall,  337,  477,  503-4 

—  Recollections  of  D.  G.  Rossetti,  by, 

5°4 

Call,  Mrs.,  370,  373,  379,  396,  513 
Cambridge,  170 
Cameron,  Mr.,  204 

—  Mrs.,  203-4,  2O7>  248 
Campbell,  Major  Calder,  59,  92 
Cargnel,  Vettor,  551 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  164-84,  219,  565 

—  Downing  Street,  etc. ,  by,  565-66 
Carmichael,  Mary,  394,  491 
Carr,  Comyns,  469-70 
Carr-Boyd,  Mr.,  467 
Catchpole,  Mrs.,  32 

Cayley,  Charles  Bagot,  36,  116,  173- 

'    76,  3n-i5>  538 

—  Poems  by,  173 

—  Translation  of  Dante,  by,  173,  309 

—  Translations  of  Homer,  etc.,  by, 

i73>  3H 

—  Prof.  Arthur,  175 
Chandler-Moulton,  Mrs.,  330 
Charlotte  Street,  38,  London,  i,  3,  4, 

540 

50,  London,  4,  7,  79,  107 

Chatham  Place,  14,  London,  112, 153, 

271 


Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  399 

yde, 
Society,  399 


— Troylus  and  Cryseyde,  by,  399-400 


Cheyne  Walk,  16,  London,  245,  271, 
272,   286,  288,  291,  316,  321,  327, 

338,  339>  340,  429.  430,  5°6>  5l8 
Christ  Church,    Albany   Street,    65, 

127 

Woburn  Square,  534-5 

Christie  and  Co.,  476 

Chronicle,  The,  300 

Ciampoli,  Prof.,  116 

Clairmont,  Miss  Clare,  351-4,  383-4, 

5*1-13 
—  Miss  Paola,  353 

II.— T 


Clayton,  J.  R.,  144 
Clint,  George,  513 

—  Portrait  of  Shelley,  by,  513 
Clough,  Arthur  H.,  102 

—  BothieofToper-na-fuosich,by,  102 
Cole,  Mrs.  Lionel,  349,  528 
Collins,  Charles  A.,  146,  151-2 

—  W.  Churton,  385 

—  Wilkie,  100,  151 

—  The  Frozen  Deep,  by,  100 
Collinson,  James,  62,  65-6,  72-5,  201, 

357 

—  St.  Elizabeth  of  Hungary,  by,  65 
Colvin,  Sidney,  334,  479 

Congo  State,  456 

Conway,  Moncure  D.,  492-3 

—  Mrs.,  492 
Cook,  Douglas,  299 

—  Keningale,  483,  506 

—  The  Fathers  of  Jesus,  by,  506 
Cooper,  Mrs.,  137,  426 

—  Samuel,  138 
Corbett,  C.  H.,  50 
Cotman,  J.  S.,  51 
Courbet,  Gustave,  345 
Cox,  Serjeant,  92-3,  101 
Crane,  Walter,  496 
Crayon,  The  (review),  180 
Critic,  The  (review),  92-4,  96,  101 
Crome,  Joseph,  51-2 

Cross,  John,  138,  140 

—  Death  of  Coeur  de  Lion,  by,  140 
Cross,  Mrs.,  140 
Cruikshank,  George,  327-8 
Cunningham,  Allan,  302 

—  Memoir  of  Blake,  by,  302 
Curran,  Miss,  374 

—  Portraits  of  Shelley,  etc. ,  by,  374, 


Dadd,  Richard,  270 
Dallas,  E.  S.,  105 
Dallas-Glyn,  Mrs.,  103-5,  I9° 
Dalrymple,  Lady,  204 
Dante,  3,  120,  309 

—  Divina  Comedia,  by,  308,  499 

—  Inferno,  by  (G.  Rossetti's  edition), 3 
translated  by  Longfellow,  etc. , 

3°9 
translated  by  W.  M.  Rossetti, 

308-10 

Darmesteter,  James,  488-90 
Davies,  Wm.,  324,  334-5 
Davis,  Valentine,  227 

—  Wm.,  226-7 

Davos  Platz,  450,  455,  457,  460,  462 
Deagostini,  G.  A.,  14 


570        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 


Dean,  Frank,  506 

—  Mrs.,  505-6 
Denmark  Hill,  London,  178 
Dessoye,  Mme.,  277-8 

Deverell,  Walter  H.,  146,  148-9,  192 

—  Twelfth  Night,  picture  by,  148 

—  Wykeham,  149 
Devonshire,  168 
Dickens,  Charles,  100,  560 

—  Mrs.,  100 

Dickinson,  Lowes,  97,  131,  138-9 

—  Robert,  138-9 
Dijon,  437 

Dilberoglue,  Stauros,  342 
Dillon,  John,  489 

Dixon,  Mrs.  Hepworth,  507 

—  Thomas,  7,  182 

—  W.  Hepworth,  90 
Dobson,  Thomas,  414 
Dodg-son,  Rev.  C.  L.,  328-9 
Dodsworth,  Rev.  Mr.,  127 
Doughty,  Thomas,  59 
Dowden,  Prof.,  240,  366,  387,  390 

—  Life  of  Shelley,  by,  366,  387 
Doyle,  Richard,  206-7 
Duclaux,  Madame,  457,  487-488 

—  Handful  of  Honey  suckle ,  by,  488 
Dumas,  Alexandre,  349 

Dunn,  H.  Treffry,  328,  346,  518 


Early  English  Text  Society,  400 
Edinburgh,  131,  343,  495-6 
Edwards,  H.  Sutherland,  169 
Ehrmann,  Alfred  von,  519 
Eldred,  Edgar,  47 
Ellis,  F.  S.,  303,  342,  386 

—  Messrs.,  519,  555 
Eminent  Women  (series),  433 
Encyclopedia  Britannica,  91,  472-3 
Endsleigh  Gardens,  5,  London,  277, 

292,  293-4,  338,  394,  42i,  440,  500, 
504 
Epps,  Dr.  John,  133 

—  Mrs.,  133-4 

Euston  Square,  London,  293 
Excise  Office,  45,  46,  553 


Fairbrother,  Miss,  190 

Faringford,  247-9 

Faulkner,  Charles,  209,  222,  430 

Ffolkes,  W.  B.,  52 

Filopanti,  Enrica,  135 

Finch,  F.  O.,  159,  265 

Fine  Arts  Quarterly  Review,  299 

Fitzroy  Square,  London,  425,  428 


Fletcher,  194 

—  The  Spanish  Curate,  by,  194 
Florence,  223,  236,  239,  267,  347-9,- 

352,  367,  449,  454,  465,  490,  511 
Fliick,  459-61 
Foley,  J.  H.,  140 
Forman,   H.    Buxton,   82,   353,  361 , 

381-2,  390 
Forsey,  C.  B.,  415 
Fortnightly  Review,  385 
Fournier,  376 

—  Cremation  of  Shelley  >  by,  376 
Fradeletto,  Prof.,  550-1 

—  Signora,  551 
Francis,  J.  Deffett,  364 
Fraser,  G.  Rae,  528 
Fraser 's  Magazine,  95,  299 
F  reeling,  J.  Clayton,  46,  414 
Frere,  J.  Hookham,  2 
From e-Sel wood,  108-9,  357 
Froude,  J.  A.,  299 

Furnivall,   Dr.,   302,   389-90,* 398-9, 
443,  5°7 

G 

Gaisford,  Thomas,  207 

Gallenga,  Antonio,  36 

Gambart,  Ernest,  265,  566 

Ganko,  279 

Garnett,  Dr. ,  87-8,  362,  387,  390,  440, 

472,  5T3>  566 

—  Mrs.,  87-8 

Gems  of  National  Poetry,  79 

Germ,  The  (magazine),  xi,  74,  80-1, 

83>  93~4»  98>  102»  15°>  l6o~l 
GeVome,  Le"on,  376 
Gilbert,  Sir  Humphrey,  398 

—  Queen  Elizabethes  Academy,  by, 

398 
Gilchrist,  Alexander,  304-5 

—  Life  of  Blake,  by,  305-6,  308 
Gilchrist,  Herbert,  305,  404 

—  Memoir  of  Anne  Gilchrist,  by,  305 
Gilchrist,  Mrs.,  305-6,  404-5 

—  Letters  on  Whitman,  by,^4O4 
Gill,  Dr.  Wm. ,  444 

Gillum,  Colonel,  340 
Giotto,  240 

—  Portrait  of  Dante,  by,  240,  350 
Glasgow,  483,  485-6 
Goldsmid,  Sir  Isaac  L.,  42 
Gosse,  Edmund  W.,  15,  333-4,  477 
Graham,  Wm.,  354,  513    ,  .        | 

—  Chats   -with  Jane    Clermont,   by, 

3S4~S 
Graham,  Wm.  (Glasgow),  340-1,518- 

*9 

Gray,  David,  523 
Great  Writers  (series),  479 


INDEX 


Greenwell,  Dora,  264 
Grimani,  Conte  Filippo,  550 
Grisi,  Julia,  188 
Gutch,  Rev.  Charles,  534 


H 

H.  (R.),  51 

Hake,  Dr.  T.  Gordon,  335-6,  407 

—  Poems  by,  335-6 

—  Vates,  by,  335 

Hake,  George  G.,  335-7,  357 
Halliday,  Michael  F.,  202 
Hancock,  John,  146,  149-50 

—  Mrs.  Charles,  506-7 
Hannay,  James,  156,  163-6 

—  Singleton  Fontenoy,  by,  164 

—  James  Lennox,  169 

—  Mrs.  Margaret,  165 
Hardinge,  W.  M.,  494,  521 
Hardy,  Iza,  491 

—  Lady  Duffus,  491 

—  Sir  T.  Duffus,  491 
Hare,  Dr.,  113-14 
Harston  and  Bennett,  528 
Hartmann,  Sadakichi,  508 
Haydon,  B.  R.,  90,  159 

—  Frank  S.,  91 

—  Mary,  90-1 

—  S.  J.  B.,497 
Hayter,  John,  205 
Healy,  Timothy,  489 
Heberden,  W.  B.,  415-16 
Heimann,  Dr.,  29,  59 

—  Fraiilein,  449 

—  Mrs.,  431 
Heraud,  Edith,  103 

—  John  A.,  102-3 
Herne  Bay,  55,  343,  432 
Hervey,  T.  K.,  78-9,  103 
Higgins,  M.  J.,  207 
Highgate  Cemetery,  114-17,  532 
Hill,  Dr.  G.  Birkbeck,  218,  223,  259, 

566 

—  Leonard,  223 

—  Mrs.  D.  O.,  397 
Hiller,  Ferdinand,  241 
Hipkins,  Wm.  A.  F.,  507 
Hiroshige,  279 
Hirsch,  Baron,  351 
Kitchener,  Elizabeth,  364 
Hogarth,  Mr.,  100 

—  Wm.,  224 

—  Club,  224,  394 
Hogg,  Mrs.,  338,  355,  377 
Hokusai,  276,  279,  282,  508 
Holbach,  Baron  von,  124 

—  Systeme  de  la  Nature,  by,  124 
Holmer  Green,  4-6 


Holmwood,  Shiplake,  231 
Holyrood  Palace,  49 
Home,  R.  Hengist,  105 

—  New  Spirit  of  the  Age,  by,  233 
H6tel  des  Trois  Rois,  Bale,  457-9 
Hotel-Pension  Anglo- Am^ricain,  San 

Remo,  434,  436 
Hotten,  J.  Camden,  402 
Houghton,  A.  Boyd,  83 
Houses  of  Parliament,  138,  140 
Howell,  Charles  A.,  327,  342,  555 
Howitt,  Mary,  93,  170-1 

—  Wm.,  170-1 

Howitt- Watts,  Mrs.,  93,  170-1 

—  Boadicea,  by,  172 
Howorth,  Sir  H.  H.,  507,  514 
Hueffer,  Catharine,  137,332-3,428,528 

—  Ford,  M.,  333,  544 

—  F.  M.  Brown,  by,  544 

—  Francis,  137,  332-3,  426,  428,  439, 
470,  521,  543 

—  Hermann,  494 

—  Oliver  M.,  333,  514 

—  Zoe,  514 

Hughes,  Arthur,  146-8,  209 
Hugo,  Victor,  189,  233 
Hunt,  Alfred  W.,  226-8 

—  Mrs.  Alfred  W.,  228 

—  Violet,  228 

—  Wm.  Henry,  in,  159 

—  Wm.  Holman,  62,  66-7,  69-70,  75- 
6,   142,   156-7,  159,   186,   192,  201- 
2,  204,  233,  321,  349,  477,  558 

—  Claudio  and  Isabella,  by,  149 

—  Light  of  the  World,  by,  266 

—  Our  English  Coasts,  by,  1 56 

—  Porphyro  and  Madeline,  by,  67 

—  Rienzi  swearing  Revenge,  by,  67 

—  Valentine  and  Proteus,  by,  169 


Iddesleigh,  Earl  of,  409,  545-6 
Imperial  Dictionary  of  Biography, 

301 

Inchbold,  J.  W.,  228-9,  348 
Ingelow,  Jean,  295 
Ingram,  J.  H.,  426,  433 

—  Oliver  Madox  Brown,  by,  426 
Inland  Revenue  Office,  45,  53-4,  409, 

411-13,417,536,  545 
lonides,  Constantine,  340-1 
Iowa,  508-9 
Ireland,  Alexander,  514 

—  Mrs.,  514 

Isle  of  Wight,  81,  249,  343 

Italian  and  other  books  on  Courtesy, 

etc.,  399 
Italy,  343,  347-8,  453 


572        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 


Janer,  Salvatore,  13 
Japan,  512 
Jarves,  J.  J.,  351 
Jay,  Harriett,  521-2 

—  Life  of  Robert  Buchanan ,  by,  521, 

523-4 
Jeaffreson,  J.  Cordy,  269-70,  299,  491 

—  The  Real  Shelley,  by,  480-1 
Jenner,  Sir  Wm.,  112,  425 
Jerrold,  Douglas,  90,  102 
Jerusalem,  142 

Jesse,  Mrs.,  90 
Jones,  Ebenezer,  471 

—  Studies  of  Sensation  etc.,  by,  471 

K 

Kasumaru,  Oshikoji,  507 
Kato,  Shozo,  508 
Keats,  John,  69,  480 

—  Isabella,  by,  69 
Kebbel,  T.  E.,  169 
Keightley,  Misses,  55 

-  Mrs. ,  55 
Keig-htley,  Thomas,  54,  55 

—  Fairy  Mythology,  by,  54 
Kelmscott    Manor-house,    218,    336, 

357.  429 

Kemble,  Charles,  104 
Kern,  Dr.,  461 
Kincaid,  Mr.,  40 

—  Mrs.,  40 

King's  College,   London,  2,  23,  25, 

29.  36,  i55»  J75 
Kipling,  Mrs.  Lockwood,  229 
Kirkup,  Barone,  239-40,  350-1,  367, 

375>  399 

Knewstub,  W.  J.,  328 
Knight,  Joseph,  331-2 

—  Life  o/D.  G.  Rossetti,  by,  332 
Kropotkin,  Prince,  451,  493 
Kruger,  President,  410 


Lamb,  Charles  (Brighton),  395 
Lambeth  MS.  Poems,  398 
Lancashire   Stoker  Works,   Bolton, 

Landor,  W.  Savage,  237-8,  241-2 

Lawson  (surgeon),  530 

Lay,  G.  T.,  374 

Leader,  J.  Temple,  366-7 

Leader,  The  (review),  404 

Lear,  Edward,  146,  156-7 

—  Landscape-painter    in    Calabria, 

by,  156 
Leathart,  James,  135,  340-1,  519 


Leech,  John,  146,  155-6 
Legros,  Alphonse,  221,  322-3 

—  Ex  Voto,  by,  322 

—  The  Refectory,  by,  221 
Leifchild,  Franklin,  176 
Leighton,  John,  144 

Leighton  House,  London,  206,  494, 

521 
Leighton,  Lord,  205-6,  282,  520-1 

—  Romeo  and  Juliet,  by,  266 

—  Venus,  by,  266 
Lemaitre,  Fre"de"ric,  189 
Leopardi,  Giacomo,  484,  501 
Lewes,  George  H. ,  90,  338,  404 

—  Mrs.,  338-9 
Lewis,  J.  Slater,  454-5 
Leyland,  F.  R.,  340-1,  519-20 
Liberty,  Lazenby,  278 
Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  271 
Linnell,  John,  306-7 
Linton,  Mrs.  Lynn,  326-7 
Linton,  W.  J.,  326-7 

Little,  J.  Stanley,  393 

Little  Holland  House,  London,  202 

Liverpool,  226,  503 

Locker-Lampson,  Frederick,  387 

Locock,  C.  D.,  361 

London,  133,  336,  343,  377,  453 

Longfellow,  H.  W.,  233,  266,  339-40, 

471 

Longmans,  Messrs.,  161,  543-4 
Londsale,  Mrs.,  513 
Lucy,  Charles,  138-9 
Lunn,  Dr.,  293 
Lushington,  Dr.,  268-9,  49 E 

—  Judge  (Vernon),  155,  236,  241,  268 
Lyell,  Charles,  2,  3,  69 

Lyster,  Alfred  C.,  54,  55,  357 


M 

MacCallum,  Mrs.,  297 
MacCarthy,  Denis  F.,  388 

—  Justin,  425,  490 
MacColl,  Norman,  470-1 
MacKail,  J.  E.,  217 

—  Life  of  William  Morris,  by,  217- 
18 

MacLennan,  J.  Ferguson,  170 

—  Poems  on  Prceraphaelite  Principle f 
etc.,  by,  170 

—  Primitive  Marriage,  by,  170 
Macmillan,  Alexander,  170 
Macmillan's  Magazine,  497 
Macready,  C.  W.,  190 
Magazine  of  Art,  xi,  494 
Major,  Rev.  Dr.,  28 
Mallarme',  Ste"phane,  334 
Mallet  du  Pan's  Memoirs,  168 


INDEX 


573 


Malta,  2 

Manchester,  337,  514 

Manchester  Townhall,  325,  428,  493, 

5X4 

Manet,  Edouard,  276 
Marciano,  Siena,  236-7 
Marillier,  H.  C.,  507 

—  D.  G.  Rossetti,  by,  520 
Mario,  Jessie  M.,  244,  566 
Marochetti,  Baron,  207 
Marshall,  John,  138,  145,  425 

—  Peter  P.  ,  209,  222,  430 
Marston,  Dr.  J.  Westland,  103,  105, 


—  Philip  B.,  103,  329-30,  426,  501 
Martin,  Mrs.,  437 

—  Sidney,  533 

—  W.  Wilsey,  418 

Martineau,   Robert   B.,   146,    157-8, 
202-25 

—  Last  Day  in  the  Old  Home,  by,  158 
Marzials,  Sir  F.  T.  ,  479 

Masson,  David,  89,  487 
Matthews,  C.  E.,  482 
Meadows,  Kenny,  146,  156 
Melbourne  (Australia),  462-4 
Meredith,  George,  82,  258,  271,  273, 
286-8,  477 

—  Modern  Love,  etc.  ,  by,  287 
Meuricoffre,  Mrae.,  351 
Michel,  Louise,  451 

Micks,  Sir  Robert,  414,  418,  566 
Midland  Institute,  Birmingham,  482 
Millais,  Mrs.,  70 
Millais,  Sir  J.  E.,  62,  66,  69-71,  75-76, 

99>  iS1.  JSSi  !92>  201>  233»  32' 

—  Ferdinand  and  Ariel,  by,  68 

—  Lorenzo  and  Isabella,  by,  69 

—  North-  West  Passage,  The,  by,  367 

—  Portrait  of  Leech,  by,  155 
Millais,  Wra.  H.,  26 

—  (senr.),  71 
Miller,  Joaqum,  337-8 

—  Songs  of  the  Sierras,  by,  337,  468 
Miller,  John,  222,  226 

Milner,  Viscount,  409-10,  415-16 
Minister,  Mr.,  275 
Minto,  Prof.  Wm.,  408 
Montgomery,  Rev.  Robert,  93 
Moore,  Canon,  483-4 
Morris,  May,  231 

—  Mrs.,  218,  230,  357 

Morris,  Wm.,  194,  209,  214-15,  217- 
18,  225,  357,  430-1,  543 

—  Golden  Wings,  by,  216-17 
Morris,  Marshall,  Faulkner,  and  Co., 

209,  215,  430 
Moscheles,  Felix,  26,  27 
Moxon  and  Co.,  358 


Moxon's  Popular  Poets,  406-7,  479 

Mullins,  24 

Munro,  Alexander,  146,  163,  170,  209 

—  Miss,  146 
Muratori,  482 

—  Annali  d' Italia,  by,  482 
Murray,  C.   Fairfax,   149,  235,  325, 

477>  S2o 

N 

Naples,  348-9,  421,  456,  465 
Napoleon  I.,  541 
Napoleon  III.,  238,  244,  344,  356 
Nash,  Rev.  Prebendary,  534-5,  538 
National  British  Gallery,    142,    158, 

203,  229,  325,  341 
National  Gallery,  181,  325,  548 
National   Portrait  Gallery,   14,  242, 

5J3»  548 

Nettleship,  J.  T.,  278,  326,  566 
Newcastle-on-Tyne,  344,  483 
Newman  Street,  London,  136 
Nichol,  Prof.,  486 

—  Lives  of  Burns  and  Byron,  by,  486 
Nineteenth  Century  Building  Society, 

440 

Nineveh  (steamer),  462-4 
Noguchi,  Yone,  280,  337,  508 
Normandy,  345-55 
Norquoy,  Mrs.,  132 
North,  Wm.,  166-8 

—  Anti-Coningsby,  etc.,  by,  166 

—  Infinite  Republic,  The,  by,  166 
North  American  Review,  290 
Norton,  Prof.  C.  E.,  507 
Norway,  251,  449 

Notes  and  Queries,  332,  358,  383 
Nuremberg,  355 
Nussey,  Edward,  26,  41 


Old  Broad  Street,  London,  58 
Orme,  Mr.,  89 

—  Mrs.,  89,  92 
O'Shaughnessy,  Arthur,  326,  340-1 

—  Mrs.,  330 
Oxford,  215,  442,  485 

Oxford  and  Cambridge  Magazine,  216 


P.  R.  B.,  62,  71,  74-5,  92,  108,  151-2, 

163,  178-9,  192,  233,  321,  349 
P.  R.  B.  Journal,  The,  63 
Palgrave,  F.  T. ,  524 
Palmer,  Samuel,  159,  265,  302 
Paris,  35,  277,  317,  344.  356>  3?6,  457. 
490 


574        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 


Paris,  Gaston,  490,  566 
Paris  Universal  Exhibition,  344-5 
Park  Village  East,  15,  London,  30 
Parry,  Sir  Hubert,  394 

—  music  to  Prometheus  Unbound,  by, 

394 
Patmore,  Coventry,  83-6 

—  Angel  in  the  House,  The,  by,  84 

—  River,  The,  by,  83,  169 

—  Mrs.  Emily,  84 

Paton,  Sir  J.  Noel,  495-6,  506,  566 

Pau,  438 

Paul,  Benjamin  H.,  168 

—  Rev.  Mr.,  23 

Payne,  J.  Bertrand,  358-9,  406-7 

—  John,  326,  333-4 

—  Lautrec,  by,  334 

Pelham  Crescent,  7,    London,    367, 

373 

Penfold,  Rev.  Dr.,  126 
Penkill  Castle,  Ayrshire,  263 
Pepe,  General,  115 
Pepoli,  Conte  Carlo,  13,  351 
Petrici,  Mrs.,  492 
Pierce,  Harriet,  13-14,  40 
Pietrocola-Rossetti,  Teodorico,  114- 

i5>  349,  543 
Pinturicchio,  237 

—  Acts  of  Pius  II,  by,  237 
Pistrucci,  Filippo,  13,  116 

—  Luig-i,  36 

Pitti  Gallery,  Florence,  297 
Poe,  Edg-ar  A.,  165,  433 
—Poems  by,  165,  337,  407 
Polidori,    Charlotte   L.,    15,    38,   40, 

127,  293,  421,  440,  543 
Polidori,  Dr.  John  W.,  119 

—  Diary  of,  385,  561 

—  Eliza  H.,  4,  6,  15,  30,  32,  113,  127, 
421,  429,  442,  535 

—  Gaetano,  i,  4-7,  9,  21,  30,  32,  no, 
118-19,  347,  543 

—  Margaret,    10,    15,    30,    113,    127, 
271,  292 

—  Mrs.,  4,  6,  30,  39,  no,  119 

—  Philip  R.,  4,  6,  30,  113,  119 
Pollen,  J.  Hungerford,  209,  223,  566 

—  Mrs.,  223 

Polydore,  Henrietta  (junr.),  7 

—  Henry  F.,  7,  85,  119,  357,  543 
Polytechnic  Institution,  London,  448 
Potter,  Cipriani,  n 

—  Mrs.,  n 

Powell,  Prof.  York,  484 
Poynter,  Lady,  229 
Preston,  Sidney  E.,  392 
Primrose  Hill,  London,  440-1 
Prinsep,  Mrs.,  203,  248 

—  Thoby,  202-3 


Prinsep,  Valentine  C. ,  203-4,  2O9»  5^6 
Privitera,  32 
Proctor,  Miss,  540 
Pyne,  Kendrick,  514 

R 

Rachel,  Mile.,  189 

Radical,  The  (magazine),  404 

Rae,  George,  135,  226-7,  34°-I>  477» 

519-20,  547,  566 

Ralston,  W.  R.  W.,  88,  269,  339 
Raphael,  211 
Rathbone,  Harold,  496 

—  Philip,  497,  547 
Read,  Harriet,  531-3 
-Mr.,  38 

Reader,  The  (review),  276 
Regent's  Park,  London,  441 
Regina  (Florence),  240 
Ricciardi,  Conte  Giuseppe,  351 
Richardson,  Anna,  264 
Richmond,  George,  265 
Rintoul,  R.  S. ,  97-9,  297 
Ristori,  Adelaide,  189 
Roberts,  Morley,  450 
Robertson,  Prof.  Eric,  479 
Robespierre,  125,  565 
Robinson,  George  T.,  487-9 

—  Betrayal  of  Metz,  by,  487-8 

—  Mabel,  488-9 

—  Mrs.,  488 
Robson,  Frederick,  190 
Roche,  Antonin,  27 

Rome,  172,  348,  380,  396-7,  449,  454, 

456 
Ronge,  Johannes,  134-5 

—  Mrs.,  134-5 

Rose,  J.  Anderson,  319,  340-1 

Ross,  George  F.,  47 

Rossetti,  Christina  G.,  i,  7,  10,  15, 

17-21,  37-9,  6l>  73-4.  79,  9°,  107- 
12,  116-17,  127-8,  133,  156,  170, 
205,  218,  243,  256,  264,  271,  285, 
292,  295»  30i,  3n-i5»  328,  337,  348, 
355,  357,  4i7»  421-2,  427,  429,  433, 
442,  474,  508,  510-11,  525-6,  529- 

42,  553,  555 

—  Bouts-rime's  sonnets,  by,  80 

—  Charon's  Boat,  by,  532 

—  Chinaman,  The,  by,  532 

—  Enrica,  by,  135 

—  From  House  to  Home,  by,  315 

—  Goblin  Market,  by,  286 

—  Monna  Innominata,  by,  315 

—  New  Poems  by,  xi,  292 

—  One  Seaside  Grave,  by,  315 

—  Poetical  Works,  complete,  xii,  72, 
530,  543 


INDEX 


SIS 


Rossetti,  Christina  G.,  Rosseggiar 
(II)  delV  Oriente,  by,  312,  315 

—  Verses  (1847)  by»  33 

Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  i,  5,  9-10, 
15,  17-25,  28,  31,  33-4,  37,  39,  57- 
63,  66-9,  72,  75.  77,  79,  81-2,  86, 
107-8,  no,  117,  128-9,  13*~9>  141, 
144-6,  149,  151,  153,  163,  165,  177, 
J79»  185-6,  192-3,  201,  208-16,  218, 

220,    224,    227-8,     230,     232-4,    245, 

271-7, 283-5,  288,  291,  302-4,  306, 

310,  318,  321-6,  328-32,  334-7,  339- 

40,  35<>»  355,  36i,   365,  396,  401, 
417,  426,  429-30,  443,  473-6,  478- 

9»  495»  497,  5°°,  5°3»  506,  5°8>  5*5- 
18,  520-2,  525,  536,  550,  554,  558-9 

—  Works  by  :— 

Annunciation,  The,  108 
Beata  Beatrix,  443,  519 
Blake,  Wm.,  writings  on,  306 
Blessed  Damozel,  xi 
Bouts-rime's  sonnets,  79-80 
Browning-  portrait,  234 
Burger's  Lenore,  translation,  xi 
Christina  Rossetti,  portrait,  69 
Collected  Works,  xi,  476,  519 
Dante's  Dream,  341 
Elizabeth  E.  Rossetti  (Siddal), 

portraits,  204 
Family  Letters,  xi,  17,  218,  474, 

497,  554-7 
Gabriele  Rossetti,  portraits,  69, 

1 08 

Girlhood  of  Mary  Virgin,  69,  108 
Goblin  Market  designs,  222,  286 
Hamlet  and  Ophelia,  497 
Hand  and  Soul,  297 
House  of  Life,  478,  524 
Letters  to  Wm,  Allingham,  259 
Lucy  Rossetti,  portrait,  357 
Mary  in  the  House  of  John,  262 
Poems,  1870,  255,  521 
Roderick  and  Rosalba,  33 
Scraps  of  Verse  and  Prose,  559 
Siddal  edition,  xi 
Sir  Hugh  the  Heron,  33,  302 
Sorrentino,  33 

Stealthy  School  of  Criticism,  522 
Tennyson  designs,  214,  254 

Rossetti,  Dora  B. ,  455 

Rossetti,  Elizabeth  E.,  74,  117,  149, 
183,  192-6,  200 

— Poems  by,  195-9 

Rossetti,  Frances  M.  L.,  I,  9,  11-12, 
15,  17,  20,  22,  30,  38-40,  61,  107-9, 

112,    H4-I7,    119,    121,    127-9,    2l8» 

271,  291,  308,  348,  355,  420-2,  429, 
517,  525,  54i,  555 


Rossetti,  Gabriel  Arthur,  437,  446, 
448-9,  454-5,  528 

Rossetti,  Gabriele,  1-3,  5,  9,  11-13, 
15-17,  22,  24,  35-6,  41-2,  61,  80, 
104,  107-8,  no-n,  113-17,  119-21, 
125-6,  129,  240,  356,  366,  484,  560 

—  Amor  Platonico,  by,  3,  117 

—  Spirito  Antipapale,  by,  3 
Rossetti,  Geoffrey  W. ,  455 
Rossetti,  Helen  M.  M.  (see  Angeli) 
Rossetti,  Lucy,  37,  136-7,  217,  256, 

329,  349,  35 i,  394,  420-4,  429-35, 
437-49,  452,  488,  492,  494,  509,  512, 
526-29,  554 

—  Mary  Shelley,    Memoir  by,   353, 
433,  49i,  5*2 

—  Romeo  and  Juliet,  by,  420,  494 
Rossetti,  Maria  F.,  i,  10,  17-19,  21, 

38-9,  56,  61,  78,  in,  115,  128,  133, 
152,  225,  271,  420-2,  426-8,  532, 
543,  544  ^ 

—  Gwndalina  Talbot,  by,  33,  78 

—  Rivulets,  The,  by,  78 

—  Shadow  of  Dante,  by,  428 
Rossetti,  Mary  E.   M.,   175-6,  344, 

446,  448,  450,  457,  494 

—  Lecture  on  Napoleon  I,  by,  457 
Rossetti,  Michael,  117,  447,  457,  543 
Rossetti,  Olivia  (see  Agresti) 
Rossetti,  Wm.  Michael,  writings  by — 

American  Poems,  selection,  406 
Blake  (Wm.)  Catalogue  Raisonne" 

of  Pictures  etc. ,  306-8 
Bouts-rime's  sonnets,  79-80,  83 
Chaucer's  Troylus  and  Boccaccio's 

Filostrato,  Collation,  399-400 
Cor  Cordium,  387 
Critic,  The,  notices  in,  101 
Dante 's  Inferno,  translation,  308, 

310,  340 
D.G.  Rossetti  and ElizabethSiddal, 

xii,  192,  194-5,  204 
D.    G.   Rossetti  as  Designer  and 

Writer,  xi,  477-8 
Democratic  Sonnets,  474-5 
Encyclopedia  Britannica,  articles 

in,  472-3 
English  Opinion  on  the  American 

War,  301 
Fine  Art,   chiefly    Contemporary, 

300,  310 

Frasers  Magazine,  articles  in,  299 
Gabriele  Rossetti,  Translated  Auto- 
biography, xi,  559^60 
Germ,  The,  articles  in,  234 
Humorous  Poems,  selection,  406 
In  the  Hill-Shadow,  78 
Introductions  to  works  by  Dickens 

and  Thackeray,  560-1 


576        WILLIAM   MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 


Italian  Courtesy-books,  399 
Jeaffreson's  Real  Shelley,  review, 

385 

Keats,  Life  of,  479 
Leopardi,  lecture,  483-5 
Lives  of  Famous  Poets,  385,  407-8, 

479 

Memoir  of  D.  G.  Rossetti,  23,  31, 
71,  108,  177,  185,  192,  194-5,  236, 
245»  283,  303,  327,  329,  335,  503, 

5l6>  532,  539.  556>  557 
Mrs.  Holmes  Grey,  81-2 
Portraits  of  Browning,  247 
Portraits    of  D.    G.    Rossetti,    xi, 

477 
Prceraphaelite  Diaries  and  Letters, 

xi,  559 

Raimond  and  Matilda,  33 

Rossetti  Notes,  Art  Journal,  xi, 
476 

Rossetti  Papers,  1862-70,  compila- 
tion, xii,  561 

Ruskin,  article  on,  180 

Ruskin,  Rossetti,  Prceraphaelitism, 
xi,  195,  488,  559 

Scott  (W.  B.)  and  Modern  British 
Poetry,  497 

Shelley,  edition  of,  359-61,  380, 
383-5,  512,  523 

Shelley,  lectures  on,  385,  482,  483, 

485 

Shelley,  memoirs  of,  385,  473 
Shelley,    notes   on,    in   Notes  and 

Queries,  358 
Shelley  in  2812-13,  255 
Shelley's  Adonais,  edition  of,  385, 

479 

Shelley's  Heart,  sonnet,  473 
Spectator,  articles  in  the,  97-8 
Stacyons  of  Rome,  notes  on,  398 
Swinburne's  Poems  and  Ballads,  a 

Criticism,  290,  523 
Talks  with  Trelawny,  367 
Taurello  Salinguerra  and  Mura- 

tori,  481 

Ulfred  the  Saxon,  33,  34 
Wives  of  Poets,  483 

Rovedino,  12 

Rowley,  Charles,  493 

Royal  Academy,  58,  64,  69,  91,  145, 
228,  255,  316,  520 

Royal  Literary  Fund,  562-3 

Rue  de  la  Falaise,  Biarritz,  438 

Rug-by  School,  160 

Ruskin,  John,  143,  177-84,  212,  227, 
262,  291,  317-19,  321,  326,  340,  547, 

—  Royal  Academy  Notes,  by,  227 

—  Time  and  Tide,  by,  182 


Ruskin,  John  J.,  178 

—  Mrs.,  178 

Ruxton,  Captain,  264-6,  268 

—  Mrs.,  268 


S.  (W.  S.),  48 

Saint   Edmund's   Terrace,    London, 

277,  428,  440-2,  529 
Saint  Katherine's  Chapel,   London, 

126 

Sala,  G.  A.,  169 
Salt,  H.  S.,  500-1 

—  Life  of  James  Thomson,  by,  500 
Salvini,  Tommaso,  189 

San  Gemignano,  242 

San  Remo,   157,  434-7,  527-8,   545, 

549 
Sandys,  F.  A.,  320-2,  566 

—  Sir  Isumbras  (caricature),  by,  321 
Sangiovanni,  Benedetto,  13 
Sanjo,  507 

Sargent,  J.  S.,  489 

Sartoris,  Mrs.,  205 

Sass's  Academy,  London,  39 

Saturday  Review,  The,  299 

Scotland,  357 

Scott,  David,  131,  396 

—  Shelley's  grave,  drawing  by,  396 
Scott,  Mrs.,  132 

Scott,  Wm.  Bell,  59-60,  130-3,  261, 
263-4,  326,  348-9>  36l>  396>  4°°» 
492,  555*  559 

—  Autobiographical  Notes,  by,  59,  263 

—  Eve  of  the  Deluge,  by,  131 

—  Wallington  Mural  Paintings,  by, 
261 

Scott  (Spectator],  297-8 
Sebag-Montefiore,  Sir  Joseph,  36 
Seddon,  Fanny,  438 
Seddon,  John  P.,  143-4,  566 

—  Memoir  of  Thomas  Seddon,  by,  143 
Seddon,  Mrs.,  144 

—  Thomas,  138-9,  142-4,  180,  393 

—  (senr.),'i42 
Sell^Dr.,390 

Selvatico,  Riccardo,  467,  549-51,  566 
Severn,  Mrs.  Arthur,  179 
Shakespear,  34,  195,  378,  532 

—  As  You  Like  It,  by,  250 

—  Henry  VI,  by,  34 

—  Sonnets  by,  250 
Sharp,  Wm.,  506,  566 
Shelley,  Harriet,  364 

—  Lady,  362-3 

—  Misses,  395 

Shelley,  Percy  B.,  57,  87,  126,  158, 
338,  35°-2,  355»  36o,  364*  369.  375- 
6,  378,  394~5>  48i,  512,  561 


INDEX 


577 


Shelley,  Percy  B.  ,  Adonais,  by  (  Wm. 
Rossetti's  edition),  87,  385 

—  Charles  the  First,  by,  363 

—  Defence  of  Poetry,  by,  401 

—  Drawings  by,  394-5 

—  Hellas,  by,  390 

—  Letters   to    Miss   Kitchener,    by, 
364-6 

—  Poems  of  (Forman's  edition),  381 
--  (W.  M.  Rossetti's  edition),  359- 

61,  380,  383-5 

—  Poems     to     Edward     and     Jane 
Williams,  by,  374 

—  Prometheus  Unbound,  by,  361 

—  Queen  Mab,  by,  123,  375 
Shelley,   Sir   Percy   F.,    362-4,    374, 

433,  5J3 

—Society,  363,  389-94,  483,  485,  501 
Shepherd,  R.  Herne,  471-2 
Shields,  Fred.  J.,  278,  323-5,  477 
Shigemasa,  Kitao,  279 
Siddal,  Elizabeth  E.  (see  Rossetti) 
Siena,  237 

Silsbee,  E.  A.,  353,  511-13 
Sim,  Dr.  Robert,  351 
Simmons,  Bartholomew,  49,  417 
Sizeranne,  Robert  de  la,  550-1 
Skipsey,  Joseph,  443 
Slack,  Henry  J.,  364-6,  387 
Slark,  John,  384 
Smargiassi,  Gabriele,  13 

—  Pictures  of  Vasto,  etc.,  by,  13 
Smetham,  James,  323-4,  534 

—  Letters  of,  324 
Smith,  Albert,  169 

—  Bernhard,  146,  150-1 

—  Miss  Anne  Leigh,  172 
Somerset  House,   London,   53,    314, 

381,  437,  441,  469,  498,  549,  553 
Sompting  (Worthing),  372-8 
Soskice,  Juliet,  333 
Spain,  439 
Spectator,  The  (newspaper),  94,  96- 

100,  180,  298,  344,  523 
Spielmann,  M.  H.,  247 
Stacy  ons  (The)  of  Rome,  398 
Stanhope,  J.  R.  Spencer,  209,  222-3 
Staude,  Alexander,  459-61 
Stephen,  Lady,  203 

Stephens,  Fred.  G.,  62,  67-9,  75-6, 

101,  159,  201,  225,  233,  471,  477, 


o  , 

Stepmak,  451 

Stewart,  Dr.  W.  E.,  530-1 

—  Wm.,  113-14 
Stillman,  Misses,  267 

—  Mrs.,  267,  342,  492 
Stillman,  Wm.  J.,  180,  267,  348 

—  Autobiography  of,  267 


Stokes,  Whitley,  176 

Story,  Wm.  W.,  237-9,  241-2 

Stowe,  Mrs.,  320 

—  Uncle  Toms  Cabin,  by,  320 
Stratford-on-Avon,  443 
Street,  Edmund  G.,  225-6 

—  Mrs.,  225 

Studies     in     European     Literature 

(book),  485 
Sugaku,  279 
Suyematzu,  Baron,  507 

—  Jenghis   Khan  and    Yoshitsume', 

by,  5°7 

Swinburne,  Algernon  C.,  82,  194, 
218-19,  220,  225,  231,  262-3,  271-3, 
287-9,  291-2,  337,  36l»  378,  390, 
477,  5oo,  523,  565 

—  Atalanta  in  Calydon,  by,  288-92 

—  Poems  and  Ballads,  by,  221,  289, 

29 !»  359,  523 

—  William  Blake,  essay  by,  220,  308 

—  (and  W.   M.   Rossetti),  Notes  on 
R.A.,  by,  221 

Swinburne,  Lady  Jane,  231 
Sydney  (Australia),  464-5 


Talfourd,  Field,  242 

—  Portrait  of  Mrs.    Browning,   by, 

242-3 

Tallent,  Mr.,  5 
Tatham,  Fredk.,  306-7 
Taylor,  John  E.,  475 

—  Miss  Emma,  373,  378,  380 
Taylor,  Sir  Henry,  xii,  207 

—  Autobiography  of,  xii 
Taylorian  Institution,  Oxford,  483-4 
Tebbs,  H.  Virtue,  144,  171,  521 
Tennyson,  Fredk.,  90 

—  Lady,  249,  251,  259 
Tennyson,    Lord   (Alfred),    85,    236, 

247-59,  378,  524 

—  Idylls  of  the  King,  by,  252-4 

—  Illustrated  edition  of,  254 

—  Maud,  by,  251 

Tennyson,  Lord  (Hallam),  250,  259 

—  Memoir  of  Tennyson,  by,  250,  255, 

258,  524 

Tennyson,  Rev.  G.  C.,  252 
Thackeray,  W.  M.,  100,  207,  560 

—  Ne-wcomes,  The,  by,  147 
Thomas,  W.  Cave,  138 
Thomson,   James   (B.  V.),    82,    330, 

500-1 

—  The  City  of  Dreadful  Night,  by, 
501 

—  Weddah  and  Om  el  Bonain,  by, 
500 


578        WILLIAM    MICHAEL   ROSSETTI 


Thynne,  Lord  Charles,  38 
Tickell,  R.  E.,  386 

—  Vale  of  Nantgwilt,  by,  386 
Times,  The,  137,  332,  521 
Tissot,  James,  276 
Todhunter,  Dr.  John,  390,  506 
Torrington  Square,  30,  London,  314, 

422,  429,  442 

Trelawny,  Edward  John,   155,  207, 
277>  35J-3>  364i  366~8o>  3^8,  396 

—  Records  of  Shelley  and  Byron,  by, 

352,376-7 
Trent,  Wm.,  47-8 
Trevelyan,  Lady,  194,  261-2 

—  Sir  Walter  C.,  194,  261-2 
Trinity  Church,  Marylebone,  126 
Tupper,  Geo.  I,  161 

Tupper,    John   Lucas,    159-60,    184, 

233,  349 

—  Poems  by,  161-2 
Tupper,  Mrs.  John,  161 

—  (senr. ),  160-1 
Turgue"nief,  339 
Turin,  466 
Turner,  W.  A.,  341 
Tweeddale,  Dr.,  463-4 


U 

Union  Debating  Hall,  Oxford,  208 
United   States,    America,    167,    404, 
449,  492 


Valentine,  Mrs.,  79 
Valpy,  L.  R.,  340,  518 
Varley,  John,  303 

—  Zodiacal  Physiognomy ',  by,  303-4 
Vaux,  W.  S.  W.,269 

Venice,  348-50,  550-1 

Venice  International  Exhibition,  549 

Ventnor,  434 

Viardot-Garcia,  Madame,  189 

Virgil,  88 

—  The  Georgics,  by,   annotated  by 
Martyn,  88 

W 

Wallace,  Sir  Richard,  546 
Wallington   Hall,    Northumberland, 

261 
Wallis,  Henry,  146,  158 

—  Death  of  Chatter  ton,  by,  158 
Ward  and  Lock,  381,  407 
Waterford,  Marchioness  of,  262 
Watson,  Dr.  J.  Spence,  264,  443 

—  Mrs.,  264 

Watts,  Alfred  A.,  93,  418 


Watts,  George  F.,  202-5,  566 

—  Lady  Tennyson,  portrait  by,  253 

—  Mrs.  Nassau  Senior,  portrait  by, 
204 

—  Tennyson,  portrait  by,  247 

—  Wm.  Morris,  portrait  by,  214 
Watts,  Thomas,  89 
Watts-Dunton,  Theodore,  195,  259,. 

273,  283,  336-7,  402,  470,  477,  518, 

Waugh,  Edwin,  493 

Webb,  Philip,  209,  216,  222,  430 

Webster,  Augusta,  502 

—  Mother  and  Daughter,  by,  502 

—  The  Sentence,  by,  502-3 
Welldon,  Mrs.,  208 

Wells,  H.  Tanworth,  146,  154,  566 
Wells,  Mrs.,  146,  153-4 

—  Elgiva,  by,  154 
Wetherall,  Mr.,  300 

Whistler,  James  M.,  182-3,  212,  276^ 
283,  316-20,  323,  341,  551,  566 

—  Cremorne  Fireworks,  by,  182 

—  Little  White  Girl,  by,  551 

—  Princesse  du  Palais  de  Porcelaine^ 
by,  492 

Whistler,  Mrs.,  320 

—  Wm. ,  320 

Whitman,  Walt,  219,  378,  401-6,  484 

—  Leaves  of  Grass,  by,  300,  400,  405. 

—  Selection  from,  by  Wm.  Rossetti, 
402-4 

Wigan,  Alfred,  190 
Williams,  W.  Smith,  96-7 
Wilson,  Lisa,  526 
Windus,  W.  L.,  226-7 

—  Burd  Helen,  by,  227 

—  Too  Late,  by,  227 
Wise,  Thomas  J.,  366,  393 
Wood,  John,  43,  49,  409,  413-14 
Woolner,  Thomas,  62-5,  67,  75-6,  81,. 

83,  89,   150-1,  201,  233,  247,  257, 
291,  431,  546 

—  Lady  Tennyson,  medallion  by,  253, 

—  Tennyson,  medallion  by,  85 
Worthing,  438,  488 

Wright  of  Derby,  14 

—  Portrait  of  himself,  by,  14 


Yates,  Edmund,  169 
Young,  Rev.  Edward,  540 
—  Night-thoughts,  by,  540 


Z.  (Y.),  283-4 

Zoological  Gardens,  London,  285-6 


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